Professor Sir David King

Founder, Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge

Professor Sir David King is Founder and Chair of the Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge; Emeritus Professor of Chemistry, University of Cambridge; an Affiliate Partner of SYSTEMIQ Limited; and Senior Strategy Adviser to the President of Rwanda. He served as Founding Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University, 2008 -2012, Head of the Department of Chemistry at Cambridge University, 1993-2000, and Master of Downing College Cambridge 1995-2000.

He was the UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser, 2000-2007, the Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative on Climate Change, 2013-2017, and Chair of Future Cities Catapult, 2012-2016. He has travelled widely to persuade all countries to take action on climate change. He initiated an in-depth risk analysis approach to climate change, working with the Governments of China and India in particular, and initiated a collaborative programme, now known as Mission Innovation, to create a £23bn pa research and development international exercise, which involves 22 countries and the EC, to deliver all technologies needed to complete the transition into a fossil-fuel-free world economy.

He was born in Durban, educated at St John’s College Johannesburg and at Witwatersrand University, graduating in Chemistry and a PhD in physical chemistry. He has received 23 Honorary Degrees from universities around the world.

As Govt Chief Scientific Adviser he raised the need for governments to act on climate change and was instrumental in creating the British £1 billion Energy Technologies Institute. He created an in-depth futures process which advised government on a wide range of long term issues, from flooding to obesity. He was Member, the President’s Advisory Council, Rwanda, and Science Advisor to UBS, 2008-12.

He has published over 500 papers on surface science and catalysis and on science and policy, for which he has received many awards, medals etc. and 23 honorary degrees from universities around the world.

Elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1991; Foreign Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002; knighted in 2003; made “Officier dans l’ordre national de la Légion d’Honneur” in 2009.

Rob Carlson

Managing Director, Bioeconomy Capital

Rob Carlson is the Managing Director of Bioeconomy Capital and is an Affiliate Professor in the Paul Allen School Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. At the broadest level, Dr. Carlson is interested in the future role of biology as a human technology. He developed new biological technologies in both academic and commercial environments, focusing on microfluidics and molecular information processing. Dr. Carlson has also developed a number of new technical and economic metrics for measuring the progress of biological technologies. Carlson is the author of the book Biology is Technology: The Promise, Peril, and New Business of Engineering Life, published in 2010 by Harvard University Press; it received the PROSE award for the Best Engineering and Technology Book of 2010 and was named to the Best Books of 2010 lists by writers at both The Economist and Foreign Policy. Carlson earned a doctorate in Physics from Princeton University in 1997. Additional writing and a weblog can be found at www.synthesis.cc.

Mary E. Maxon

Associate Laboratory Director for Biosciences, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

As Associate Laboratory Director for Biosciences, Dr. Mary Maxon oversees 650+ people in three scientific research divisions and the DOE Joint Genome Institute. She believes that cultivating talent and promoting inclusion are central to the creation of a successful work environment driven by a diversity of partners working toward shared objectives. Dr. Maxon was Assistant Director for Biological Research at OSTP under President Obama. Previously, Dr. Maxon ran the Marine Microbiology Initiative and co-developed California Science and Technology Policy Fellows Program for the California Legislature at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Dr. Maxon’s policy experience also includes drafting the intellectual property policies for the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Dr. Maxon received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in Molecular Cell Biology and did postdoctoral research in biochemistry and genetics at UC San Francisco. Dr. Maxon’s research experience also includes working in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors.

Christina Smolke

CEO and Co-founder, Antheia, Inc.

Christina D. Smolke is CEO and Co-founder of Antheia, Inc. and Professor (Research) of Bioengineering at Stanford University. She earned her B.S. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Southern California in 1997 and her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at UC Berkeley in 2001.

Dr. Smolke is a pioneer in the fields of synthetic biology and metabolic engineering. Her team led the breakthrough research to engineer baker’s yeast to produce some of the most complex and valuable plant-based medicines known to humankind, including the opioids, noscapinoids, and tropane alkaloids. At Antheia, her vision and leadership has enabled a synthetic biology platform that dramatically expands the diversity and complexity of molecules that can be reconstructed, enabling new possibilities for drug discovery as well as rapid, localized, on-demand drug manufacturing at scale.

Dr. Smolke’s impact in advancing the frontiers of biotechnology has been recognized with numerous awards, including Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator, Nature’s 10, AIMBE College of Fellows, NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, WTN Award in Biotechnology, and TR35 Award.