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Dr James Wilkie is Director of Enterprise & Innovation for the University of Birmingham, CEO for Alta Innovations (the technology transfer company for the University of Birmingham), and CEO of the Birmingham Research Park, which houses two incubators including the BioHub Birmingham®, a fully equipped life sciences incubator.

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After a 30-year stint as a professional editor and journalist that ended on April 30, 2016, Mr Narayanan Suresh formally joined ABLE on May 2, 2016 as its COO. The association was founded in 2003 to represent the interests of the fast-growing biotechnology industry.

For more than 13 years as the Editor of BioSpectrum, Mr N Suresh has worked closely with the biotech sector. Therefore, his rich experience and knowledge are expected to benefit the industry in due course of time. From being  a neutral observer to the biotech industry insider, his second innings now allows him to continue the association with sector.

The journalistic journey of Mr N Suresh began exactly 30 years ago in May 1996 when he joined the Times of India in New Delhi as their first-ever Exclusive Science Reporter, after a grueling 10-month training in Social Journalism with the Times Center for Media Studies( then called The Times Research Foundation School for Social Journalism) in the very first batch.

From a writer, in 1997 he moved to CyberMedia as the Associate Editor of DATAQUEST, the country’s leading IT publication, and it was a transformation, from being just a writer to an Editor-Manager. “The Chairman of Cybermedia, Mr Pradeep Gupta as well as one of its then Directors, Mr Shyam Malhotra believed in my capabilities and gave me many challenging roles that involved creating strong publication brands, says Suresh nostalgically.

At CyberMedia, he was later involved in launching and building the BioSpectrum magazine, the only source of information for biotech industry back then. Later, he also moved on with the brand to MM Activ Sci-Tech Communications when it was acquired by the later. During his long stint as the Editor, he managed and edited various publications within these publishing houses.

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Urvashi Prasad is a public policy specialist at NITI Aayog, the Indian Government’s premier think tank. She is also the founder of Every Voice, a platform that highlights the perspectives, needs, challenges and aspirations of people living in poverty in their own words. Urvashi was previously a Director at Operation ASHA, one of India’s largest tuberculosis control NGOs. She also led the health portfolio of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation in India for five years. Urvashi is on the governing board of Partnership for TB Care & Control, the largest tuberculosis network in India. She completed her Bachelors in Genetics from University of Birmingham, UK, followed by a Masters in Bioscience Enterprise from University of Cambridge, UK and a Masters in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Urvashi is passionate about gender-related and animal welfare issues. She is also a blogger and writes extensively for several platforms including the Huffington Post and Nextbillion.net.

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Andy Street, CBE (born 11 June 1963), is a British businessman and politician who was the managing director of John Lewis from 2007 to 2016. He is now the Conservative Mayor of the West Midlands, elected in the May 2017 mayoral election. As such, he is the United Kingdom’s first openly gay directly-elected metro mayor.

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Dr. Villoo Patell is an Academic Entrepreneur who founded Avesthagen in 1998. Avesthagen is globally recognized as a leading systems biology company with a unique model focused on the convergence of food, pharma and population genetics. A convergence that leads to continuous and path-breaking innovations in predictive, preventive, personalized healthcare. Owing to her pioneering work in the field of molecular biology, Dr. Villoo Patell has long-standing professional relationships with individuals, institutions and corporates working in the domain of biotechnology across the world. She is a key member of the Task Force and Vision Group for Biotechnology, instituted by the State Government of Karnataka and founding member of the Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises (ABLE). Dr. Villoo Patell was Awarded the ‘Officer of the National Order of Merit’ by the President of the French Republic in April 2008.

Dr. Villoo Patell has worked with Dr. Richard Jefferson to initiate the development of pCAMBIA vectors for transformation of crops with both agrobacterium and biolistic methodologies. The pCAMBIA range of vectors, today, are used worldwide by agricultural researchers and the project was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.
Dr. Villoo Patell has worked with Dr. Richard Jefferson in creating vectors for transformation of rice by both agrobacterium and biolistic technologies. (This was the first start to the creation of pCAMBIA vectors that went on to become used by agricultural researchers in the world.).
Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.

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Tony Hickson BSc, MBA, CLP, RTTP is Managing Director of Imperial Innovations and an Executive Director on the board of Touchstone Innovations plc. Tony is responsible for intellectual property sourcing, licensing and spin-out creation for technologies arising from Imperial College London. Prior to joining the company in 2002, Tony had acquired 15 years of commercial and business development experience in bioscience companies including Wellcome Group, Murex Biotech, Abbott Laboratories and Kalibrant Limited.

He has been a board director or observer for a number of start-up companies including Emcision, Polytherics (now Abzena) and Catapult Therapy TCR Limited, and was instrumental in the creation of companies such as Thiakis (sold to Wyeth, now Pfizer, in 2008), Respivert (sold to J&J in 2010), Circassia (floated on LSE in 2014) and Cell Medica (in advanced clinical studies). Tony is a Certified Licensing Professional, a board director of PraxisUnico and until recently acted as Chairman of the Intellectual Property Board of the European Institute of Technology Climate Change KIC.

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Lars Dahle is the Founder, and has been CEO of Digno since its inception in 2012. He is a thought-leader in the use of Telehealth and Remote Patient Monitoring in Norway and is an advisor to health care policymakers in the parliament of Norway. Government agencies and LocaL Mnicipal bodies. His focus is on understanding and overcoming the organisational inhibitors of telecare providers to start and then scale up the use of Telehealth/Remote Patient Monitoring.

Before Dignio, Mr Dahle held senior management positions in Telecom operators and IT-vendors, such as HP. He holds a MS in Computer Science from the Technical University of Norway  (NTNU) and a MS in Management from MIT, Solan School of Management.

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Professor S.S. Vasan is a Senior Business Development Manager (Research & Technical Microbiology Services & Innovation) in a new executive agency of the Department of Health, formed by the merger of Health Protection Agency with ~100 sender organisations such as National Treatment Agency, Public Health Observatories, UK National Screening Committee and NHS cancer and non-cancer screening programmes, Cancer Registries, Quality Assurance Reference Centres, Strategic Health Authorities, Specialised Commissioners, and parts of the Department of Health, including Public Health Marketing.

It aims to help bring about fundamental improvements in the public’s health and wellbeing by focusing its energies on five key priorities:

1. helping people to live longer by reducing preventable deaths from conditions such as heart disease, stroke, cancer and liver disease

2. increasing healthy life expectancy by tackling conditions which place a burden on many lives, such as anxiety, depression and back pain

3. protecting the population from infectious diseases and environmental hazards, including emerging risks and the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance

4. supporting families to give children the best start in life, through working with health visitors, Family Nurse Partnerships and the Troubled Families Programme

5. helping employers to facilitate and encourage their staff to make healthy choices.

Over the last two decades, I have gained expertise and experience in these areas:
– Biosafety, biodefence and biosecurity
– Biotechnology and bioengineerng
– GMOs, and their applications in health and agriculture
– Infectious diseases, especially medical entomology
– Microbiology services including bioprocessing and bioseparation
– New business development and innovation, especially for life sciences, bio/pharma and medical products.

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The Managing Director of Clonz, Narasimha is one of the key founding members of the company. His passion and vision combined with his academic and industrial experience in the world of Proteins (Proteomics) is the driving force of the company towards developing affordable bio therapeutics.

Narasimha’s Research experience in Cancer Biology at CCMB (Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology) helped him to contribute through his work at a USA based MNC as Product Manager for its Indian subsidiary and  also as a Group Leader – Proteomics & Genomics for a reputed CRO, prior to the birth of Clonz.

His wide exposure to countries like Malaysia, Korea, Thailand, China, France, Germany, Switzerland, and USA on various business assignments is also helping in positioning the company.

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Salman Rahman has a career in biomedical research spanning over 25 years working at some of the UK’s leading academic and biomedical research institutions. Salman began his research career studying the biochemistry of gap junctions at the National Institute for Medical Research (MRC) using targeted antibody technology to elucidate the structure-function of connexins leading to his PhD in 1991. Following post-doctoral posts at the Thrombosis Research Institute London and at the Centre for Thrombosis and Haemostasis at St Thomas’ Hospital, where he studied the structure-function of disintegrins, Dr Rahman was appointed as Lecturer at King’s College London between 1999-2009 where he investigated the role of the extracellular matrix and disintegrin-metalloproteinase (ADAMs) in regulating vascular cell signalling in the context of angiogenesis and cardiovascular disease. His research with colleagues during this period led to discoveries that would underpin the development of Vasgen.

Dr Rahman has published over 30 papers with esteemed colleagues from the UK, US and China and holds an Honorary Senior Lectureship in the Dept. Cell Biology at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology. In 2011, he co-founded Vasgen, where he is currently the CEO, in order to develop novel therapeutic technologies.

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Andrew has responsibility for ensuring that processes are aligned and optimised to support the introduction and uptake of technologies and best practices. This entails creating an on going dialogue between industry and policy makers to ensure efficient and effective access and payment structures are created and maintained.

In addition to the Market Access portfolio Andrew also leads on the ABHI Ethics and Compliance program. This includes credentialing, Code of Business Practice and Human Rights.

Having graduated with a degree in Applied Physics, Andrew entered the commercial environment and has gained over 20 years experience in the medical devices industry having worked within medical technology divisions of household names such as Thorn EMI, Philips and Bristol-Myers Squibb. He has held roles covering UK and international marketing, market access and business development working with both capital and consumable equipment.

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Anthony Finbow has achieved success over many years as a CEO of technology businesses. Having occupied every seat at the board table: Chairman, CEO, CFO, NXD and Investor Director (for both public and private companies), he is uniquely qualified to assist Leaders and their management teams in meeting and overcoming the most significant challenges that they will encounter on their journey.

He helps Leaders across Europe by providing enlightened and creative coaching support and advice. In addition to coaching services, he provides Leadership education, training and strategy consulting services to independent businesses in the “scale up” phase, to large corporations engaged in significant change and to government.

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Mahesh Kandula  is an entrepreneur with a proven record of founding and managing life sciences-oriented ventures from an idea into advanced clinical trials and commercialization. Inventor of several potential novel molecular entities in various therapeutic areas including Thrombosis, Lipid Disorders, Diabetes, CNS, Asthma, Cancer, Neurodegenerative Diseases, Hypertension and Liver Cirrhosis.

Sole inventor of more than 100 novel drug molecules and are currently at various stages of non-clinical and clinical development and, are also under strategic collaboration with multinationals in different geographies for advancing the lead candidates to obtain global regulatory approvals for marketing.

Experience in deal-related activities in all fields of life science businesses. Highly motivated individual with an ability for multi-tasking both individually and as part of a team.

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Dr. BS Ajai Kumar is the chairman and CEO of HCG. Dr. Ajai Kumar founded HCG to realize his vision of making advanced cancer care accessible to all. He has been the driving force behind HCG’s growth since inception. He has served as the CEO since 2005.

Dr. Ajai Kumar’s contribution to the field of cancer care in India as well as his successes as a first generation physician entrepreneur has been widely recognized. He has been awarded the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, the CII Regional Emerging Entrepreneurs Award, and the BC Roy Award by the Indian Science Monitor. He is also a recipient of the Karnataka Rajyotsava Award.

Dr. Ajai Kumar has been a practicing oncologist in the US and India for over three decades. He completed his residency training in Radiotherapy from the MD Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute of the University of Texas, and his residency training in Oncology from the University of Virginia Hospital, Charlottesville. He received his MBBS from the St. Johns Medical College, Bangalore.

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Hitesh Thakrar is a Partner of Syncona Investment Management Ltd. He is an experienced investor in the sector, having spent over 20 years investing in public global equities in the life sciences, technology and the innovation sectors.

He has worked at various institutions in equity research and Fund Management from ADIA, the sovereign wealth Fund of Abu Dhabi, JP Morgan, Aviva Group, Dresdner Bank and New Star Asset Management. He has a strong track record, rated AA manager and was also a top 1 percentile manager in global equities. He is on the Board of Desktop Genetics, a CRISPR IP library company, backed by Illumina and is an angel investor in early stage Innovation companies. He is also on the Investment Committee of the LBA Scale Up Innovation Fund.

Hitesh holds a degree in Chemistry from Kings College, London, MBA from Cranfield University and CFA, the American Association of Investment Analysts.

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In charge of Quantumzyme’s science and strategy, Naveen comes with over 20 years of scientific & entrepreneurial experience in the drug discovery industry across the USA, Australia and India.

He has published several research papers and the most notable was published in Nature in July 2017 with a few more interesting discoveries in the pipeline for the year.

Naveen is an entrepreneur and hands-on executive officer with extensive knowledge of Pharma, Healthcare, regulatory and medical devices scenario in India. Solid Healthcare, Life Sciences background known for strategic and focused approach, with extensive accolades for establishing creative strategies for optimizing internal operations, financial returns, limiting risk, creating lean teams, and external customer service and output.

Prior to founding Quantumzyme, he served as the CEO of Cryo Stemcell and prior to that as Director at Philips Research, where he was associated with a portfolio of opportunities for new business creation in healthcare and energy. In his previous roles, he has risen through the ranks – from being a bench worker at an Australian research institute to heading the strategic business unit of an American drug discovery informatics company. He has conceptualized and developed novel solutions for accelerating drug discovery and directed teams consisting of experts from different domains including chemistry, proteomics and systems biology. He has been instrumental in conceiving new ideas that are the basis for the company’s patent portfolio.

Has been a speaker and presenter in several international conferences.

• World Congress for Preventive and Regenerative Medicine, Taiwan.
• ABLE Bioinvest
• Bangalore Bio
• Bio Partnering Europe, London, UK.
• Bio North America, Vancouver, Canada.
• Beyond Genome Conference, San Diego, USA.
• IBM High Performance Computing conference, Hyderabad, India

Guest Lectures in several institutions like:

• IIT Madras
• University of Virginia
• University of California, San Diego
• Indian Business Academy, Bangalore, INDIA

Advisor – Board of Studies at:

• Welingkar Institute of Management
• Department of Biotechnology, SDM Group of Institutions

Previous engagements:

CEO – Cryo Stemcell

Overview of the profile:

Turnaround of the company from a Stem cell banking service provider to become a healthcare company and developed the roadmap and business plan for next level funding. Initiated PRP therapy and Hospital partnerships with new customer acquisition and sales team mobilization pan India.

Director – Philips Research Asia

Overview of the profile:

As Director Business Development at Philips Research Asia, Naveen was involved in identifying and developing technology ventures for spin-ups, spin-ins (technology acquisition) and spin-outs in Philips. He has successfully developed and managed a portfolio of opportunities for New Business Creation across Healthcare and Energy relevant for India, emerging markets and globally.

CEO – Polyclone Bioservices

Overview of the profile:

Founded Polyclone and lead the company as a CEO and successfully forged Drug Discovery Alliances, developed markets for Genomics and Proteomics services, Virtual Screening and Research Information Systems.

• Responsible for developing a Govt. recognized R&D unit
•  Successfully raised R&D Grants from various national and international agencies
•  Managing research projects from start to finish in various areas of cancer genomics
•  Filing of the first patent for a cancer target

Principal Consultant, Life Science – SysArris Inc, USA

Overview of the profile:

Initiated and implemented Bioinformatics services for SysArris. Established niche offerings and positioned the company as a leading provider of consulting, technology, outsourcing and applied research services for pharma and biotech industry.

RESEARCH

CRC for Diagnostics Technologies (CDT) Brisbane, Australia Summary:

CDT is an A$40 million/yr. Co operative research center and a consortium of academic partners and members of Australian Diagnostics Manufacturers Association, sited at Brisbane. This Project involved developing a novel Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) based DNA diagnostic assay, utilizing the Amplification Refractory Mutation System (ARMS) principle for the detection of single gene mutations.

EDUCATION

MSc, Applied Science (Life Science) Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, AUSTRALIA BSc, Microbiology, Bangalore University, INDIA

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Phillip D’Costa is an experienced Partner specialising in commercial, fraud, IT and financial services dispute resolution, arbitration and ADR. Phillip has been ranked as a leading individual for UK and India dispute resolution in Chambers Global 2014 and foreign expert in Chambers Global 2015.

Key areas of practice:
• Commercial – Litigation & Arbitration, jurisdictional issues, partnership/LLP, contractual claims, shareholders, Technology, director’s duties and insolvency;
• Civil Fraud – Company investigations, restitution claims, misrepresentation, asset tracing, freezing & recovery, supply chain fraud, employee fraud;
• Financial Services & Regulatory – Securitisation, asset finance, leasing, share fraud, miss-selling, derivatives and structured products, money laundering, regulatory, compliance;• Has a particular interest in arbitration and transactional work involving India and has advised on a number of disputes and transactions involving India or Indian Companies, Families and Individuals.

Specialities:
Civil Fraud – Company investigations, Freezing Orders, Fraud investigation and Asset tracing.

Commercial – Litigation & International arbitration, jurisdictional issues, partnership and LLP advice and disputes, IT & IP disputes, contractual claims, shareholders disputes, Asset Finance & Leasing, Cross border transactions, Insolvency and Licensing.

Financial Services & Regulatory – miss-selling, money laundering, regulatory, compliance.

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Shobha Vijayaraghavan has 20 years of business experience in Life Sciences – Identifying, building and monetizing value in the organization: from ideas to products to platforms.

Her experience and expertise include:

* Seamless and continuous integration of information and analysis of the market and clinic with in-house scientific knowledge to enhance research programs and product propositions.

* Deal-making, out-licensing and collaboration experience with large pharma and research organizations – benchmark deals with above average terms

* Valuation and value building, including strategizing for growth and funding.

* Portfolio assessment, prioritization and planning, based on intensive analysis of market and clinic as well as a thorough understanding of the strengths, differentiation and gaps in the portfolio.

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Andrew Fried is IBM Life Sciences Leader for Europe.

Andrew helps clients address industry imperatives and save lives through the power of cognitive insights.  He works with clients to advance the next generation of discovery and development, acting on insights to drive value, enhance relationships across the ecosystem and empowering people to make better decisions.

Prior to transferring to Europe in July 2015, Andrew was IBM’s Life Sciences Leader for China. While in China Andrew worked with many leading multi-national companies and several Chinese Life Sciences companies who were leaders in their respective segment.

Before joining IBM in 2000, Andrew had a successful 14-year career with a leading strategy consulting company.  He graduated from Melbourne University with a Bachelor of Arts, and Monash University (Melbourne, Australia) with a Bachelor of Business.  Andrew has a Masters of Business Administration from the International University of Japan and is a Fellow of the Financial Services Institute of Australasia. He was a three-term board member on a government enterprise with assets of over $350M. He was a founding director of a successful dot.com start-up in the early 2000s.

Andrew is an advocate of sport and fitness as a gateway to good health.  He is passionate about the role of genomics in identifying both the cause of disease and personalized solutions.

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Dr. Aman Puri assumed charge as Consul General of India, Birmingham on 22 February, 2017. He is a member of the Indian Foreign Service, having joined the service in 2003. He served at the Indian Mission to the European Union, Belgium and Luxembourg, based at Brussels, from 2005-08. He served at the Passport Office in Chandigarh for little over a year from 2009-10.

Subsequently, he held the office of Deputy Chief of the Protocol (Ceremonial) from 2010-2013, and his responsibilities included organising the foreign visits of Prime Minister of India, and the incoming visits at the level of Heads of States/Heads of Government, Vice Presidents and Foreign Ministers.

Dr. Puri was the Regional Passport Officer, New Delhi from 2013-16, during which period many citizen centric measures were implemented by the Ministry of External Affairs.

Most recently, he had brief stints as Director in the Multi-lateral Economic Relations Division, followed by the Northern Division of the Ministry of External Affairs. The Northern Division deals with India’s relations with Nepal and Bhutan.

Dr. Puri (born 1976) did his schooling from St. John’s High School, Chandigarh, and qualified as Dentist from Dental College based at Amritsar.

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Dr. Vishwas is a molecular virologist with over 18 yrs experience in bio/pharmaceutical discovery research at leading Indian pharmaceutical companies. He was associated with the discovery & pre-clinical development of 2 NCEs and also helped establish the protein therapeutics research center of Glenmark Pharmaceuticals at Neuchatel, Switzerland. Dr. Vishwas has concieved & developed the eSAME technology platform of Seagull BioSolutions.

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Pratik Dattani is the Managing Director at EPG Economic and Strategy Consulting and UK Director for FICCI. He is also the co-founder of a tech start-up in the CSR space. Previously he worked in Economic Consulting at FTI Consulting, on public policy and international arbitration cases, and at Deloitte in London and Abu Dhabi, focussing on public policy and telecoms. In 2009, he founded and led one of the Deloitte’s largest diversity networks. He was Chairman for a not-for-profit membership organisation with several thousand members for three years.He studied Economics at Warwick University, where he was awarded the Prize for Excellence, and LMU University of Munich. Pratik’s dissertation won a prize at an international economics conference at Georgetown University, Washington DC. He has published academic research on behavioural economics and social impact, most recently in the Social Enterprise Journal in 2014. He is a regular commentator on public policy and India across print, TV and online media.

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