Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, FRS, is President and Vice-Chancellor of The University of Manchester. She joined the Victoria University of Manchester in 1987, became Professor of Physiology in 1994 and held an MRC Research Chair from 1998 to 2010. Concurrent with her Faculty posts she has also held University roles as Vice-President for Research (2004-2007) and as Deputy President & Deputy Vice-Chancellor (2007-2010). Her own research in the field of neuroscience, which is ongoing, has contributed towards major advances in the understanding and treatment of brain damage in stroke and head injury.

She was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in June 2004 and made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in June 2005, in recognition of her services to science.

Professor Rothwell became President and Vice-Chancellor in July 2010, the first woman to lead The University of Manchester or either of its two predecessor institutions. She was the founding President of the Society of Biology, and has also served as a non-executive director of AstraZeneca. She is currently co-Chair of the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology, a Royal Society Council Member, a Deputy Lieutenant for Greater Manchester, Chair of Corridor Manchester Board and a member of the Greater Manchester Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) Board.

Professor Rothwell takes a strong and active interest in public communication of science and regularly gives talks to schools and the public and contributes to television, radio and press, particular on sensitive issues in science. In 1998 she delivered the Royal institution Christmas Lectures, televised by the BBC.

Hakim joined the Northern Health Science Alliance (NHSA) in 2013 from PA Consulting Group where he focused on the integration of academia, clinical and business functions in the translational medicine field.

At PA Consulting Hakim completed a secondment with UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) helping to establish a new private-public sector model as Chief Operating Officer for the Life Science Investment Organisation (LSIO) and delivering it across a global network of UK Government staff. He maintains links with the UKTI LSIO team and continues to advise LSIO management.

Hakim was a Principal Consultant within the Technology Practice at PA where he helped establish and manage PA’s Translational Medicine team to work across academic, clinical and industry spheres with a focus on the identification, commercialisation and implementation of novel biomedical innovations. Hakim also worked at specialist translational medicine consultancy, 4D-Biomedical, now a think tank.

Hakim holds a PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Cambridge and is the author of several peer reviewed publications.

In 2011 Hakim helped start the not-for-profit, Global Heart Network where he is a Director and Vice President.

Rowena took up the role of Chief Executive at Manchester Science Partnerships in summer 2012.

Educated at the University of Wales and at University College London, and having trained in nursing, Rowena’s early career was spent with the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Authority and Manchester City Council, working in a variety of transport and economic development roles, including the first phase of Manchester's Metrolink light rail system. Over ten years she moved through a number of roles with the Manchester Airports Group, including latterly that of Group Commercial Director, where her brief included airport acquisitions, economic regulation and overall business strategy, as well as responsibility for revenue generation.

Rowena returned to the city in March 2008, as COO in commercial property company Bruntwood, a role which took her into every part of the business, with a strong focus on service improvement and organisation development. She took up the reins as Chief Executive at MSP after Bruntwood invested in the company in 2012. She remains a Director of Bruntwood. She describes the MSP role as perfect, a public/private sector partnership focused on driving growth and opportunity in the most vibrant and innovative sectors of the economy. Rowena's professional feet are very firmly planted in city life, where she is active in several boards and initiatives.

Away from work, she has a passion for all things rural, and is rarely found indoors other than round a dining table with family or friends.

Martino is the CEO of the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst. Martino has a PhD in Biochemistry and spent 4 years at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX in Cardiovascular research. Martino joined Amersham International in 1991 and subsequently went on to manage the R&D Technology Transfer Group, based in Cardiff and developing high throughput screening technologies for the Pharmaceutical sector. Following the merger of Amersham with Pharmacia Biotech, Martino became the Science Director for the Cardiff site, Martino then became Managing Director of UMIC and MICL and was a Board member of UKBI. Martino was also acting Chairman for a start-up company, sri Forensics Ltd (2011-2014) and has previously been on the Board of Cartesian Technologies. Most recently, Martino has also been appointed to the Life Science Wales Hub Board as a Non –Executive Director and is also on the assessment panels for CRACK-IT (NC3Rs) and TSB (now Innovate UK) Biomedical Catalyst Funding respectively.

Professor Jean-Noël Ezingeard was appointed Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University in October 2013.

He is responsible for Strategic Planning, and has oversight of the University’s eight Faculties. Since his appointment he has led on the transformation of the organisation of research at the University resulting in the creation 12 new Research Centres to address key societal and economic challenges in the UK and beyond. He is closely involved with some of the regional research and skills initiatives, notably Health Innovation Manchester and the growth of High Level and Degree apprenticeships at Manchester Met.

Jean-Noël is an Engineering Science graduate from Ecole Centrale de Lille, an Engineering Grande Ecole. He later obtained an MSc in Advanced Manufacturing Systems and his PhD from Brunel University.

Before joining MMU he was Executive Dean of Kingston Business School in London where he oversaw a £30m transformation of the School’s buildings, a significant growth in research activity and enhancements to teaching and the curriculum. As Executive Dean he continued to teach on the MBA programme and to supervise doctoral students.

His early career was as a lecturer at Brunel University and Course Director for the Special Engineering Programme. He was then appointed as a member of Faculty at Henley Business School where he later served as Professor of Processes and Systems Management and Academic Dean (Associate Dean for Faculty). He researches in the area of technology management, applied to Information Systems, Information Assurance and Security, and Logistics Information Management.

Geoff is the Chief Executive of Bionow having founded the business in 2011 to further represent the interests of the Northern biomedical cluster and enable Bionow members to be the most productive and competitive in the world. Having led the business through establishment and overseeing year on year growth he has overall responsibility for all aspects of Bionow. A key priority is our strategic aim to be the leading biomedical membership organisation in terms of reputation, service and impact. Geoff is regularly invited to advise and comment on industry requirements and represent the Bionow membership both regionally and nationally.

Geoff is also a Board Member of the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences and joined Bionow in 2007 when part of NWDA, where the team oversaw investments of over £100m into the sector.

Prior to this Geoff was founder and Technical Director of Biorite Ltd and Advanced Biomedical Ltd both spin-out companies from the University of Manchester. Geoff has a degree in Biochemistry and a PhD from the School of Pharmacy, University of Manchester where he began his career undertaking postdoctoral research.

Claire Brown is currently the Investment Manager for Alderley Park Ventures, a Life Science focused Seed fund based out of Manchester, UK and part of Biocity Group Ltd.

Prior to joining Biocity Group, she was a Project Director at Astrazeneca responsible for the delivery of strategic cross therapy scientific initiatives, in-licensing & repositioning internal assets and, working with MediVentures, identifying & securing innovative investment opportunities for AZ-Medimmune.

She has over 15 years experience working within the Biopharmaceutical industry managing projects across a variety of therapy areas and multiple stages of development including in submission and on-market products. Prior to Astrazeneca Claire held a variety of scientific focused roles in the USA at UCB and Genzyme, gaining experience across a variety of modalities and therapeutic areas.

Educated in Scotland Claire first received her BSc (Hons) from the University of Glasgow, subsequently followed by a PhD and more recently an MBA.

Andy is a senior leader in AstraZeneca who has moved regularly in his career between project management and a variety of functional line management roles which has given him a wide perspective on the issues of working in big Pharma.

Andy’s academic education is as a synthetic organic chemist; he obtained his degree and PhD in from the University of Wales in the UK and followed this with post doctoral research at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Andy started his career in Chemical Process R&D firstly in scientific leadership roles and later in project management positions. During this time Andy was involved in the development and commercialization of several significant products including Faslodex, Arimidex, Seroquel and Crestor.

Following time spent in Business Development, as a Site Head and VP Projects & Portfolio Management, Andy’s current role is now VP Pharmaceutical Innovation in AstraZeneca’s Pharmaceutical Technology & Development function.

Lynn Sheppard is Director of the Manchester Enterprise Centre (MEC); a leading centre of enterprise/entrepreneurship education that has developed a highly regarded suite of taught programmes and activities that encourage students across the University of Manchester to have the confidence to develop innovative ideas.

Before joining the Centre in 2000, she spent most of her career working in advertising and marketing and is a Chartered Member of the Institute of Marketing; during that time establishing and managing a number of companies. Lynn has a strong connection to the Manchester region and for over a decade was a senior member of the business development team at Trafford Park Development Corporation, which over a 10 year period attracted private sector investment of £1.7billion. Lynn has a science and technology background with undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Chemistry.

Her particular interests are in the applied areas of enterprise and entrepreneurship learning, business start-up, business innovation and customer-led marketing.

Daniel, CEO, founded Biorelate while studying his PhD at the University of Manchester, researching the use of software to build biological databases for disease study.

His background also includes a BSc in biology from the University of Southampton and a MRes in bioinformatics and computational biology from the University of Leeds, as well as experience working at Merck and Pfizer. This broad background in biomedicine has given Daniel a solid understanding of the problems researchers face in acquiring and making sense of complex data to solve intricate hypotheses.