Andrew Griffith

Minister of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology

Andrew Griffith was appointed Minister of State for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology on 13 November 2023.

He was previously Economic Secretary to the Treasury between 27 October 2022 and 13 November 2023.

He was Financial Secretary to the Treasury between 7 September 2022 and 27 October 2022.

He was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Department for International Trade between 8 July 2022 and 7 September 2022.

He was Parliamentary Secretary (Minister for Policy and Head of the Prime Minister’s Policy Unit) from 3 February 2022 until 8 July 2022.

He was appointed Adviser on Sustainable Infrastructure Investment from September 2021 until the end of December 2021.

He was the UK’s Net Zero Business Champion from November 2020 until the end of the Cop26 UN Climate Summit.

He was elected Conservative MP for Arundel and South Downs in 2019.

Professor Sir Brian Hoskins

Founding Director, Grantham Institute for Climate Change

Brian Hoskins has been a Professor of Meteorology in the University of Reading for 40 years, was the Founding Director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London and is now its Chair.

He has had many national and international roles, including being a member of the UK Climate Change Committee for its first 10 years, and involvement in the IPCC.

He is a member of the science academies of the UK, USA, China and Europe, and was knighted in 2007 for his services to the environment.

Dr Mary Maxon

Executive Director of Biofutures, Schmidt Futures

Mary E. Maxon, PhD is the Executive Director of BioFutures, an effort focused on maximizing the potential of biotechnology toward a circular bioeconomy.

Previously she was Associate Laboratory Director for Biosciences at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and before that she was Assistant Director for Biological Research at the Office of Science and Technology Policy where she was the principal author of the Obama’s Administration’s National Bioeconomy Blueprint. Currently, Mary serves as a US State Department-appointed Delegate to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Biotechnology, Nanotechnology, and Converging Technologies Working Party. She is also a member of the Global Bioeconomy International Advisory Council, a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Standing Committee on Biotechnology Capabilities and National Security Needs, and a member of the Carnegie Institution for Science Board of Trustees.

She was the program lead for the Marine Microbiology Initiative at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the first Executive Director of the Science Philanthropy Alliance, and also has extensive experience in industry in a number of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.

Mary holds a PhD in Molecular Cell Biology from the University of California at Berkeley, and did postdoctoral training in genetics at the University of California, San Francisco.

Chi Onwurah

Shadow Minister (Science, Research and Innovation)

Chi Onwurah is a British Member of Parliament representing Newcastle upon Tyne Central and is also Shadow Minister Science, Research & Innovation.

Former Shadow Ministerial positions:

April 2020-December 2021 Digital, Science & Technology

October 2016 – April 2020 Industrial Strategy Science & Innovation (and Shadow Digital Minister Feb-April 2020)

September 2015-October 2016 Culture and the Digital Economy

January 2013 - Sept 2015 Cabinet Office leading on cyber security, social entrepreneurship, civil contingency, open government and transparency

October 2010 – January 2013 for Innovation, Science & Digital Infrastructure working closely with the Science and business community, with industry on Broadband issues, and on the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill. Chi continues to encourage women in STEM.

Prior to Chi’s election to Parliament in May 2010 she worked as Head of Telecom's Technology at the UK regulator Ofcom focussing on the implications for competition and regulation of the services and technologies associated with Next Generation Networks.

Prior to Ofcom, Chi was a Partner in Hammatan Ventures, a US technology consultancy, developing the GSM markets in Nigeria and South Africa. Previously she was Director of Market Development with Teligent, a Global Wireless Local Loop operator and Director of Product Strategy at GTS.  She has also worked for Cable & Wireless and Nortel as Engineer, Project and Product Manager in the UK and France, 

Chi is a Chartered Engineer with a BEng in Electrical Engineering from Imperial College London and an MBA from Manchester Business School. She was born in Wallsend and attended Kenton Comprehensive School in Newcastle, where she was elected the school’s ‘MP’ in mock elections aged 17.

Chi is a Fellow of both the Institution of Engineering & Technology (FIET) and the City & Guilds of London Institute (FCGI) and also an Honorary Fellow of the British Science Association.

Professor Dame Angela McLean

Government Chief Scientific Adviser, Government Chief Scientific Adviser

Professor Dame Angela McLean DBE FRS is the Government Chief Scientific Adviser having taken up the role in April 2023. She is also Head of the Government Science and Engineering Profession. Prior to this Angela was the Chief Scientific Adviser for the Ministry of Defence.

Until April 2023, Angela McLean was a Professor of Mathematical Biology in the Department of Zoology at Oxford University and a Fellow of All Souls College. Angela’s research interests lie in the use of mathematical models to aid our understanding of the evolution and spread of infectious agents.

Angela is interested in the use of natural science evidence in formulating public policy and has co-developed the Oxford Martin School Restatements: an activity which restructures and presents the evidence underlying an issue of policy concern or controversy in a short, uncharged, intelligible form for non-technical audiences.

Angela established Mathematical Biology at the Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council’s Institute for Animal Health in 1994. Before this, Angela was a Royal Society Research Fellow at Oxford University and a Research Fellow at the Institut Pasteur in Paris.

In 2009 Angela was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. She has been awarded the Gabor Medal in 2011 and the Weldon Memorial Prize in 2018. She received her damehood in the 2018 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

Professor Nigel Scrutton

Director , Future Biomanufacturing Research Hub

Nigel is Professor and Director of the EPSRC Future Biomanufacturing Research Hub and the BBSRC Synthetic Biology Research Centre 'SYNBIOCHEM'. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society. He is a Founding Director and CSO of the fuels-from-biology company C3 BIOTECH Ltd and its subsidiary company C3 BIOTECH (Maritime and Aerospace) Ltd. 
He is former Director of the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (MIB) (2010-2019), which was recognised by the award of the Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education (2018-20) as 'a leader in the UK’s strategic development of biotechnology and bio-manufacturing, through innovative technologies in partnerships with industry'. 

Nigel’s group is noted for its contributions to the study of enzyme catalysis, mechanistic and structural biology, synthetic biology, and bio-based chemicals/fuels manufacture. His work is interdisciplinary and is supported by state-of-the-art infrastructure for biophysical chemistry and synthetic biology that he and colleagues have established in MIB.

Dr Michael Köpke

Chief Innovation Officer, LanzaTech

Dr. Michael Köpke is the Chief Innovation Officer at LanzaTech, a public company that uses biology to capture and transform carbon into sustainable products such as fuels, chemicals, proteins and materials. Michael is overseeing the process of innovation and technology partnerships within LanzaTech. Since joining in 2009, Michael built up the company’s synthetic biology platform and computational biology capabilities.

Michael is a pioneer in synthetic biology of CO2-fixing microbes and carbon-negative biomanufacturing with 20 years of experience in the industrial biotech field. Michael holds a Ph.D. in biotechnology from University of Ulm and is an inventor of over 500 patents and author of more than 50 peer-reviewed publications. Michael is also an awardee of the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge award for Greener Synthetic Pathways.

Beyond his role at LanzaTech, Michael serves as an adjunct faculty at Northwestern University and council member at the Engineering Biology Research Consortium, where he chairs the roadmapping working group. Michael led and contributed to various community-based efforts including development of a research roadmap on engineering biology for climate and sustainability by a consortium of over 90 experts, as well as serving on several editorial andscientific boards and as co-chair for international conferences and workshops.

Professor Regina Birner

Chair, Social and Institutional Change in Agricultural Development at the Hans-Ruthenberg-Institute

Regina Birner is the Chair of Social and Institutional Change in Agricultural Development at the Hans-Ruthenberg-Institute of Tropical Agricultural Sciences at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Germany.  Her research focuses on policies, governance and institutions that are essential for global food security and the bioeconomy. Before joining the University, Regina Birner led the governance research program of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington, DC. She has more than 25 years of empirical research experience in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Her work appeared in international journals such as World Development, Global Food Security, Information Technology for Development and the Journal of Cleaner Production. She has been consulting with international organizations, including the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Bank. She is a member of the Bioeconomy Council of the German Federal Government, the International Advisory Council on Global Bioeconomy (IACGB) and the International Consortium on Applied Bioeconomy Research (ICABR). Regina Birner holds a PhD in Socio-Economics of Agricultural Development from the University of Göttingen, Germany, and an M.Sc. in Agricultural Sciences from the Technical University of Munich (TUM).

Dr Mike Daniels

Vice President of Product, Evonetix

Mike Daniels is Vice President of Product at Evonetix, having joined the business in March 2021 with over 20 years’ experience of marketing, product management and business development across the biotechnology sector. His previous roles include Director level positions in Marketing and Product Management at Thermo Fisher Scientific, Cancer Research UK, GE Healthcare and Promega UK. In addition, Mike is a member of the UK’s Biosecurity Leadership Council and represents Evonetix with the Engineering Biology Advisory Committee of the BIA and with the International Gene Synthesis Consortium. Mike holds a PhD in Molecular Genetics and Protein Biochemistry from the Department of Biochemistry and Genetics at the University of Newcastle and has completed numerous professional qualifications and training in marketing, management, and IP law.

Antoine Pechin

Winton Ventures

Antoine Pechin is an Investment Director at SynBioVen, an early-stage VC launched in early 2022 to back primarily UK-based companies leveraging synthetic biology to drive the transition towards a bio-based economy. With SynBioVen, which partners with SynbiCITE to support its portfolio companies, he has invested in 8 synbio companies to date across food & agtech, biomanufacturing and life sciences. Antoine also leads Winton Ventures, the VC arm of quantitative investment management firm Winton, where he mainly invests in cybersecurity and machine-learning. Antoine has a Master’s in Management (Finance) from Edhec Business School in France. 

Rt Hon Lord David Willetts

Executive Chair, Resolution Foundation

The Rt Hon Lord Willetts is the Executive Chair of the Resolution Foundation. He served as the Member of Parliament for Havant (1992-2015), as Minister for Universities and Science (2010-2014) and previously worked at HM Treasury and the No. 10 Policy Unit.

Lord Willetts is a visiting Professor at King’s College London and an Honorary Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. He is a Board member of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), Chair of the Genome Research Campus and Chair of the British Science Association. He serves on the Board of Surrey Satellites Ltd and of the Biotech Growth Trust. He is a member of the Board of the Crick Institute and a Trustee of the Science Museum. He is a Governor of the Ditchley Foundation and a member of the Council of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and an Honorary Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He is Chancellor of the University of Leicester.

Lord Willetts has written widely on economic and social policy. His book ‘The Pinch’ about fairness between the generations was published in 2010. His latest book “A University Education” is published by Oxford University Press.

Irsyad Khairil

CTO, Valink Therapeutics

Irsyad is Co-Founder and CTO of Valink Therapeutics. He completed his DPhil at the University of Oxford as a protein engineer and subsequently worked on several cancer projects in the pharmaceutical consulting sector, which shape the direction of Valink's LiliumX platform. His DPhil work explored modular protein assembly technologies as a precursor to LiliumX.

Rennos Fragkoudis

Edinburgh Genome Foundry

Rennos Fragkoudis completed his PhD on molecular virology at the University of Edinburgh and for ~15 years he concentrated his research on the pathogenesis of arthropod-borne viruses (arboviruses) in both vertebrate and invertebrate systems working with alpha-, flavi- and bunyaviruses.

In November 2019 he returned to the University of Edinburgh to take the post of the manager at the Edinburgh Genome Foundry. Together with the Foundry team, Rennos promotes the usage of automation across all disciplines of Life Sciences and actively expand the capabilities of the Foundry.

Shirin Bamezai

SynBioUK

“Shirin began her career in synthetic biology pursuing an interdisciplinary degree in Molecular Bioengineering (MEng) at Imperial College London. In 2022, she lead the ICL undergraduate team “Sporadicate” in the iGEM competition, landing a place on the Top 10 teams globally.

Inspired by how synbio can be instrumental in building resilient food systems, as a PhD student at Imperial, she is now developing a novel metabolic engineering tool to enable the bioproduction of powerful natural food additives. Outside of the lab, she serves on SynBioUK’s committee as the lead of the Governance working group, motivated by synbio’s potential in establishing a more sustainable and equitable bioeconomy.”

Jeffrey Anthony

Head of Engineering Biology Partnerships, National Physical Laboratory (NPL)

Jeffrey joined NPL in 2019 and works as part of NPL’s Life Sciences Partnerships Team. With a focus on health technology development and the pharmaceutical sector. He works with collaborators across the health sector to identify ways in which NPL’s measurement science expertise can support research into the prevention, early diagnosis and treatment of disease including the development and manufacture of new medicines.

Jeffrey’s technical background is in microbiology, and he has worked in the pharmaceutical industry in quality assurance and product development roles in Australia. Prior to joining NPL he worked with LGC Group and was responsible for the development of genomic marker technology development to support the agriculture and healthcare sectors, leading a team based in  Southeast Asia. Jeffrey holds a BSc (Hons) in Biotechnology from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Natalio Krasnogor

Founder and CTO, Gitlife

Natalio Krasnogor is a Professor of Computing Science and Synthetic Biology, directing Newcastle’s Interdisciplinary Computing and Complex BioSystems (ICOS) research group and leading Newcastle’s Centre for Synthetic Biology and the Bioeconomy. He is the recipient of a 10-year Chair in Emerging Technologies from the UK Royal Academy of Science for work on DNA data storage and has been an EPSRC Leadership Fellow in Synthetic Biology in the past.

In addition to his academic role, Krasnogor is the co-founder and CTO of GitLife Biotech, where he leads the development of innovative solutions at the intersection of computing and biotechnology. GitLife flagship product, CellRepo, is a specialised version control system for biological cell samples and digital data that enables sound biological assets' intellectual property rights management.

Krasnogor's expertise lies at the confluence of Synthetic Biology, DNA/RNA nanotechnology with machine intelligence, computational modelling and software engineering.

George Katzaros

SynBioVen

Nadav Rosenberg

Saras Capital

Nadav Rosenberg is an ex-Air Force pilot with an MBA from INSEAD France and an MSc in Economics from the University of London. Nadav started his business career as a strategy consultant with McKinsey &Co., before joining as an early operator to Groupon ($9.5b IPO), Taboola ($2.6b IPO) and Entrepreneur First ($10b portfolio EV). Between 2015 and 2020, Nadav invested in 27 deep tech start-ups. In 2020, Nadav founded Saras Capital, a micro fund first-check investor in Tech.Bio.Platforms ventures across the UK, Europe, and Israel. Saras is a first investor in companies like Ochre Bio, Eleven Therapeutics, Core Biogenesis, Infinitopes, Scarlet Comply, Lindus Health and many more. Saras is committed to investing in 50 more Tech.Bio.Platforms early-stage ventures across the UK, Europe, and Israel in the next 3 years.

Lionel Clarke

Co-Chairman, UK Engineering Biology Leadership Council

Following academic studies in Imperial College, in Cambridge University and in Grenoble, France (as a Royal Society European Research Fellow), Lionel Clarke began his career developing environmentally-improved transport fuels with Shell, initially as global technical lead pioneering the global phase-out of leaded gasoline and, from 2000, the development of advanced biofuels. He left Shell in 2014 to form his own bio-environmental consultancy.  He was invited by the UK government in 2011 to chair the generation of the UK Synthetic Biology Roadmap, and subsequently to co-chair the UK’s Engineering Biology Leadership Council (EBLC), an independent advisory council alongside George Freeman, UK Minister for Science. 

Lionel Clarke is a visiting professor in the Department of Bioengineering in Imperial College and holds an honorary professorial chair in the Faculty of Chemistry in the University of Manchester.  In 2019 he was awarded an OBE by HM Queen Elizabeth for services to Synthetic Biology. 

Alex Conradie

Professor of Sustainable Bioprocess Engineering, UCL

Alex was the Chair in Sustainable Chemical Processing at the University of Nottingham (UK) before joining UCL. Alex holds a BEng(Hons) and a MSc in Chemical Engineering from Stellenbosch University (South Africa), and a PhD in Advanced Process Control from Stellenbosch University (South Africa) in collaboration with the University of Texas at Austin (USA).

His research is primarily focused on deploying biotechnology in support of a sustainable future, working closely with industry collaborators on technology demonstration. Underpinning this paradigm shift towards renewable processing, Alex’ multi-disciplinary skills and expertise include biochemistry, systems biology, fermentation technology, downstream purification, process modeling, optimisation, techno-economics and process control.

As Professor in Sustainable Bioprocess Engineering at UCL, Alex will continue his research in sustainable manufacturing within UCL’s new Manufacturing Futures Lab (MFL). The MFL will host a number of exciting MSc degree programmes. In addition to research, Alex has an enthusiasm for sharing his appreciable industry experience with students, having worked in both the industrial biotechnology and biopharmaceuticals sectors between 2002 and 2016.

Matthew Cummings

Cofounder, CC Bio

PhD in Synthetic Biology and Microbiology The University of Manchester.

Livjia Deban

CSO, Prokarium

As Prokarium’s CSO, Livija leads the strategic and operational development of Prokarium's portfolio, designing the perfect bacteria as living cures for difficult-to-treat cancers. Prior to joining Prokarium, Livija headed the lead selection and immuno-oncology R&D at Oxford BioTherapeutics where she focused on the target discovery and the development of immunomodulatory antibodies for cancer treatment. Livija conducted her academic research at Cancer Research UK and holds a PhD in Basic and Applied Immunology.

Matthew Duchars

CEO, Chain Biotechnology

Matthew is an accomplished executive with 35 years of experience in the Bio Pharma industry. Trained as a microbiologist, he has a degree and PhD from Sheffield University. He has broad multisector experience of operating in commercial, not-for-profit and government sectors, with extensive experience of growing companies in both US and UK. On completing his PhD, he joined Imperial Chemical Industries to work in their Biotechnology division (later to become Astra Zeneca and now FujiDiosynth). During his 20 year tenure he helped build a vaccine company where he was the Chief Scientific Officer. With the sale of thatcompany to the US, he too moved to the US where he spent 11 years in various roles including: Senior VP R&D at the Sabin Vaccine Institute, VP Product Development for Emergent Biosolutions, Head of Research and Global Operations at United Therapeutics Virology and Chief Scientific Officer for Pharmathene LLC. He returned to the UK in 2019 to be CEO of Vaccine Manufacturing and Innovation Centre, and went on to become CEO for Chain Biotechnology in 2022.

Cian Duggan

CEO and Co-Founder, Resurrect Bio

Dr Cian Duggan is the CEO and Co-Founder of Resurrect Bio Ltd., a London-based plant biotech startup specializing in finding how to use gene editing to enhance crop resistance. With a background in researching the immune system of crops, Dr Duggan, along with his co-founders Dr Tolga Bozkurt (Imperial) and Prof Sophien Kamoun (TSL), developed an innovative platform to "Resurrect" resistance genes in crops that are currently defeated.

The company is a spinout of The Sainsbury Lab Norwich, and was incubated for a year by Dr Duggan's PhD department at Imperial, the Department of Life Sciences before settling into the Imperial Incubator in White City. 

Driven by the Innovate UK Young Innovators Award 2021-2022, Dr Duggan made the leap from scientist to founder. The company has achieved significant milestones, securing a successful Angel pre-seed round in January 2022, followed by a £1.61M Seed round in March 2023. Resurrect Bio now expands its R&D team and focuses on developing products, including a solution for Soybean Cyst Nematode—a microscopic worm causing $1.5B yield losses in the US annually.

James Field

Founder and CEO , LabGenius

James is the founder and CEO of LabGenius, a next-generation antibody discovery company. 

LabGenius has pioneered the development of an ML-driven protein engineering platform that’s capable of designing, conducting and critically learning from its own experiments. 

As CEO, James has raised >$30M in financing from top-tier VCs (e.g. Lux Capital, Obvious Ventures, Atomico and Kindred) and struck R&D deals with top pharma companies like Sanofi. 

Prior to founding LabGenius, James completed a PhD at Imperial where he developed novel methods for re-engineering protein nanocages for targeted drug delivery.

James is a recognised thought leader having spoken on the world stage at events like Milken Global Conference, TEDMED, RAAIS and CogX. James also plays an active role in briefing policymakers in government on AI-enabled drug discovery. 

Outside work, James is an active Angel Investor and has had the good fortune to back several of Europe’s most exciting deep-tech startups. 

Paul Freemont

Co-Director, SynbiCITE

Paul has been working at the forefront of international synthetic biology developments since 2002 and has played a key role with Dick Kitney in developing from the outset the UK strategy for synthetic biology research, innovation and training.

A leading figure in synthetic biology, he has played a key part in the development of synthetic biology in the UK and was a co-author of the British Government’s UK Synthetic Biology Roadmap. Paul has been a passionate advocate for synthetic biology research and translation both in Europe and internationally and has participated as a technical expert in the United Nations Convention for Biological Diversity and Biological Weapons Convention. He is also a working group member of the US NIST synthetic biology standards consortium.

Paul’s research interests span from understanding the molecular mechanisms of human diseases and infection to the development of synthetic biology platform technologies and biosensors and he is the author of over 170 peer-reviewed scientific publications. He gives many lectures both at international scientific meetings and also public lecture - the most recent being the Ellison-Cliffe medal lecture at the Royal Society of Medicine.

With Dick Kitney, Paul co-founded and co-directs the UK’s first academic research centre for synthetic biology at Imperial College London (CSynBI) and the first R&D centre for synthetic biology SynbiCITE.

Paul is also very active in public engagement including numerous public debates - the most recent at the Royal Institution and public displays including at the Science Museum and the first ‘pop-up’ lab at the Victoria and Albert museum. He is also an advocate for training young people and talks regularly at schools and and has successfully co-supervised Imperial undergraduate iGEM teams since 2006.

Miroslav Gasparek

CEO and Co-Founder, Sensible Bio

Miro Gasparek is the CEO and Co-Founder of Sensible Biotechnologies. Sensible Biotechnologies develops a cell-based platform for scalable and cost-effective manufacturing of high-quality mRNA to enable the next generation of mRNA therapies. Sensible raised a $4.2mn pre-seed round led by BlueYard Capital and closed a strategic partnership with Ginkgo Bioworks (NYSE:DNA) to develop its mRNA platform. 

Miro studied Bioengineering at Imperial College London and did research in systems and synthetic biology at Imperial, Caltech, and Stanford. He worked with several TechBio VC investors in the US and Europe. Miro also worked on biosecurity research at Stanford and advises the Slovak Ministry of Health and Executive Board Member of the World Health Organisation on biosecurity and global health. Miro is a Co-Managing Director of Nucleate in the UK, the world’s largest non-profit organisation supporting student-led biotechnology enterprises. He is pursuing PhD in Engineering at the University of Oxford.

Alicia Graham

CEO and Co-Founder, MadeSweetly

Alicia is the CEO and co-founder of MadeSweetly. She has a PhD in synthetic biology from Imperial College London and specialised in non-model organisms in food. Prior, she was based in Paris where she completed a masters in interdisciplinary life sciences. She is a big believer of the power of microbes in future solutions!  

She is always open to talk about anything regarding food- from new recipes to try or cutting edge foodtech! 

Per Greisen

Vice President for Computational Protein Design, BioMap

Per is BioMap's Vice President for Computational Protein Design. He has achieved a very successful career in Novo Nordisk, where he was Vice President for Computational Drug Design and also served as an interim VP for Research Engineering before he left for BioMap. Per joined Enevolv (now Gingko Bioworks) in 2019 in Boston.

Per received his bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and master’s degree in Bioinformatics from the University of Copenhagen. He started his PhD in quantum mechanics, neural networks, and protein folding but he quickly pivoted his research area to computational protein design. In 2012 Per went to the University of Washington to focus on computational protein design of metalloproteins in David Baker’s Lab.

Gustaf Hemberg

CEO and Co-Founder, Scindo

Gustaf Hemberg is the CEO and co-founder of Scindo, a biotech company developing novel enzyme functionality for cell-free biomanufacturing of specialty chemicals from sustainable feedstocks. Scindo’s mission is to unlock novel renewable or upcycled feedstocks to promote resource efficiency and phase out crude oil derived chemicals.  

Gustaf completed an undergraduate degree in Chemistry at the University of Oxford before discovering his passion for chemical biology in the Ben Davis group, where he went on to complete his Master’s degree and PhD.

India Hook-Barnard

Executive Director, Engineering Biology Research Consortium (EBRC)

Dr. India Hook-Barnard is Executive Director of the Engineering Biology Research Consortium (EBRC). She works with leaders from across academia, industry, and government sectors to identify and shape scientific opportunities, technical feasibility, and policy issues. Her goal is to advance and accelerate engineering biology solutions across all application areas, drive innovation, and grow the bioeconomy for all. 

Prior to joining EBRC, India helped launch and was the Executive Director for the California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine, and was Associate Director, Precision Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. India worked at the U.S.National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) where she directed standing committees, workshops, and six consensus reports, including Toward Precision Medicine (2011) and Industrialization of Biology (2015).

India was a postdoctoral research fellow at the National Institutes of Health, and earned her PhD in Microbiology-Medicine at the University of Missouri.

Richard Kitney

Co-Director, SynbiCITE

Professor Kitney has been working at the forefront of synthetic biology and has been pivotal in shaping its development in the UK and internationally since 2003.

He has championed synthetic biology to governments, industry, learned societies and the public. Kitney is globally recognised as pioneering in the field. Dick has been a leader of UK R&D and the translation of synthetic biology for more than a decade, promoting global synthetic biology developments.

As Chair of The Royal Academy of Engineering’s Inquiry into Synthetic Biology and a member of the UK’s Ministerial Synthetic Biology Leadership Council, Dick has driven the UK’s approach to the field and the technology, its development and its translation into industrially useful products, tools, processes and services - alongside educating future synthetic biologists. In addition to The Royal Academy of Engineering Inquiry Report (Synthetic biology – Scope, Applications and Implications, 2009), he is one of the authors of the two, subsequent, UK roadmaps for synthetic biology (A Synthetic Biology Roadmap for the UK, 2012; and Bio Design for the Bio Economy, 2016).

Dick Co-Directs the UK’s first R&D centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation (CSynBI) and the UK’s National Industrial Translation Centre for Synthetic Biology (SynbiCITE).

He gives many keynote presentations at public lectures and international conferences – recently the IET Kelvin Lecture and the City and Guilds Fellowship Lecture.

Cai Linton

CEO , Multus

Cai Linton has an MEng in Molecular Bioengineering from Imperial College London and combines technical knowledge in tissue engineering & data science with management experience. His motivation to create a sustainable future using biotechnology led him to co-found Multus to shorten routes to market and lower entry barriers in the cultivated meat industry. Multus creates the key ingredients for the affordable scale-up of cellular agriculture. The company's growth media formulations and ingredients are the building blocks of cellular agriculture and enable the affordable at-scale production of real animal products, including meat, dairy, leather, and more, using cells instead of animals.

James MacDonald

CTO , Solena Materials

James MacDonald co-founded Solena Materials Limited, an IP spin-out from Imperial College London, and has served as CTO since its inception in April 2022, setting up the company’s operations from scratch. Solena aims to commercialise a new class of computationally-designed synthetic protein fibres. Solena uses computational design, deep learning, and automation to accelerate the development of bespoke materials. James obtained an undergraduate degree in Physics from Imperial College London but has since pursued a research career in protein folding/design and synthetic biology using both computational and wet-lab experimental techniques. He has experience in industry having worked for a multinational consultancy where he rewrote and modernised their internal software. This diverse expertise provides him with a comprehensive understanding of both the technological and commercial landscapes. He is a member of the Bioindustry Association’s Engineering Biology Advisory Committee.

Piers D. Millett

Executive Director, International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science (IBBIS)

Piers D. Millett, Ph.D. is Executive Director of the International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science (IBBIS). Dr. Millett is a certified biorisk management professional, with a specialization in biosecurity.

Dr. Millett was Deputy Head of the Implementation Support Unit for the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), a treaty for which he worked for over a decade. He has consulted for the World Health Organization, supporting its integration of research and development into responses to public health emergencies and considering the health implications of advances in technology. As Vice President for Responsibility for iGEM Foundation (International Genetically Engineered Machines Competition), Dr. Millett established and ran a program strengthening the culture of responsibility and risk management with more than 350 projects each year, involving more than 6,000 young scientists and engineers from 45 countries across every inhabited continent.

Trained originally as a microbiologist, Dr. Millett has worked closely with the citizen science movement, synthetic biologists, the biotechnology industry as well as national and international policymakers and decisionmakers. He has collaborated with a range of intergovernmental organizations spanning human and animal health, humanitarian law, disarmament, security, border control, law enforcement, and weapons of mass destruction— both inside and out of the United Nations system.

He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations and Affairs, an MRes in Research Methodology, and an MA in International Politics and Security Studies—all from the University of Bradford. He has a BSc in Microbiology from the University of Leeds.

Fiona Mischel

Director of International Outreach, SynbioBETA

Fiona began her career as a science communicator covering CRISPR, climate, and biotech for space travel. Now based in London, she leads SynBioBeta's international team with a focus on human health, climate, and policy. 

Jenny Molloy

Group Leader, ICGEB & University of Cambridge

I study the role and impact of open approaches to Intellectual Property for a Sustainable and Equitable Bioeconomy. My work focuses on better understanding problems facing researchers accessing biological research tools in low-resource contexts, particularly Latin America and Africa. My team develops innovative technologies for local, distributed manufacturing of enzymes to improve access and build capacity for biological research. The broader aim of my research is to contextualize “open source” approaches to biotechnology within current narratives of innovation and the bioeconomy policy agenda.

Cassidy Nelson

Head of Biosecurity Policy, Centre for Long-Term Resilience

Dr Cassidy Nelson is the Head of Biosecurity Policy at the Centre for Long-Term Resilience. Over the last decade, Cassidy has worked as a doctor in clinical medicine and infectious disease public health, and as a biosecurity researcher at the University of Oxford. She has advised internationally on health security policy and has served as a consultant to the World Health Organization, the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense, and RAND Europe. A physician-scientist by training, Cassidy completed her Doctor of Philosophy in Biology at the University of Oxford and her Medical Degree at the University of Queensland. She also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Melbourne and a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience and Developmental Biology. Her academic research has focused on surveillance of 'Disease X' novel pathogens. In 2021, she was named a Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security’s Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative (ELBI) Fellow.
 

Anne Osbourn

Group Leader, John Innes Centre

Professor Anne Osbourn OBE FRS NAS is a Group Leader at the John Innes Centre working on plant natural products. Her discovery that in plant genomes the genes needed to make particular natural products are often organised in clusters like ‘beads on a string’ has greatly accelerated the discovery of new pathways and chemistries.  She has established a synthetic biology platform based on transient plant expression that provides rapid access to previously inaccessible compounds and analogs at gram scale. These two step changes open up new routes to combine genomics and synthetic biology to synthesize and access previously inaccessible natural products and analogs for medicinal, agricultural and industrial applications.  Anne was awarded the Novozymes 2023 Award in recognition of her scientific contributions. She is also a poet, and has developed and co-ordinates the Science, Art and Writing (SAW) Initiative, a cross-curricular science education outreach programme. Her prize-winning poetry collection ‘Mock Orange’ was recently published.

Louise Owen

Senior Civil Servant, Cabinet Office.

Louise is a Senior Civil Servant working in the Cabinet Office. 

Petra Oyston

Synthetic Biology Lead, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl)

Dstl’s role is to maximise the impact of S&T for the defence and security of the UK. Prof Oyston is Dstl’s lead on Synthetic Biology, with a role in identifying potential applications for this emerging and potentially disruptive technology to address some of the most challenging problems faced by defence. Working across academia and industry in both the UK and overseas, Prof Oyston has built a world-leading programme and has over a hundred publications in scientific journals. Her technical output has been recognised by Fellowship status in the Royal Society of Biology and the American Academy of Microbiology, Visiting Professor status at Southampton University, and by appointment as a Dstl Research Fellow. 

Ben Reeve

Cofounder and CTO, Modern Synthesis

Ben Reeve, Modern Synthesis is the cofounder and CTO of Modern Synthesis, developing materials from microbes to replace leather and coated textiles in the fashion industry. He has an MA from the University of Cambridge and a synthetic biology PhD from the Ellis Lab at Imperial College London. Previously he was a founding member and CTO of the successful materials spin-out, Puraffinity, where he helped to develop sustainable water treatment materials.

Douglas K. R. Robinson

Policy Advisor, OECD Directorate of Science, Technology and Innovation

Dr. Douglas K. R. Robinson is a Policy Advisor at the OECD Directorate of Science, Technology and Innovation where he is spearheading work on Future-oriented Strategic Intelligence for STI policy, mission-oriented technology assessment, is part of an OECD cross-cutting initiative building a framework for anticipatory technology governance of emerging technologies, and is part of the OECD Global Forum on Technology where he is leading an expert focus group of 50 synthetic biology experts spanning 29 different countries, including participants from Africa, Asia, North America, Latin America, Europe and Oceania.

Originally trained as a Physicist and Space Scientist (MPhys), Douglas holds a PhD in technology assessment and foresight for emerging technologies (University of Twente 2010) and a Habilitation (Professor Qualification) in Innovation Management (Université Paris Dauphine 2020). Previously, Douglas was co-director of the LISIS research lab in Paris and a research scientist at the CNRS, France. Since 2017, is an honorary associate of the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at UCL, UK, led by Prof. Mariana Mazzucato focusing on mission-oriented innovation policies.

Susan Rosser

Director, Edinburgh Mammalian Synthetic Biology Research Centre

Susan is Professor of Synthetic Biology and Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) Chair in Emerging Technologies at the University of Edinburgh. She is Director of the UK Centre for Mammalian Synthetic Biology and Co-director of the Edinburgh Genome Foundry for synthetic DNA synthesis and assembly.  She also held a prestigious Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Leadership Fellowship in Synthetic Biology. In 2022, her work was recognised by the national academies of both Scotland and Wales, being elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) and Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. She served as a member of the Scottish Science Advisory Council, Scotland's highest level science advisory body, providing independent advice and recommendations on science strategy, policy and priorities to the Scottish Government. Her research focuses on using synthetic biology approaches for developing and controlling genetic circuits for applications in cell and gene therapies as well as metabolic engineering. She is co-founder of two early-stage start-ups using a combination of AI and engineering biology for new gene therapies and enzyme replacement therapies for rare diseases.

Rachel Shaw

Co-founder and CEO, Eden Bio

Dr Rachel Shaw is a co-founder and CEO of Eden Bio, a UK biotech start up using machine learning to revolutionise microorganism-based protein production through maximising protein productivity. Within a year of launching, Eden Bio raised £1M and successfully delivered on its first commercial contracts. Prior to leading Eden Bio, Rachel worked for the world's largest independent funder of cancer research, bringing in and stewarding key partnerships, high-value donations worth up to £40M and representing the company for mass fundraising through a range of media, including live telethons. Rachel also has a PhD from King's College London and has published three books.

Izzy Webb

Head of Engineering Biology and Strategy, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology

Dr Izzy Webb is the Head of Engineering Biology and Strategy in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. Prior to this Izzy has held roles in the Business Secretary’s Office, leading on R&D policy, as well as leading on technology policy in the Prime Minister’s Policy Unit. She has also held roles in various policy departments including BEIS and Defra. Before joining the Civil Service Izzy completed a PhD in microbiology at the John Innes Centre and University of Oxford, investigating a set of proteins involved in symbiotic nitrogen fixation.

Nicole Wheeler

Research Group Leader, University of Birmingham

​​Nicole Wheeler is a research group leader at the University of Birmingham and a consultant for NTI | bio. Dr Wheeler has expertise in biochemistry, pathogen genomics, and AI/machine learning. Her work focuses on the development of screening tools for identifying DNA from emerging biological threats and the ethical development of artificial intelligence (AI) for health and biosecurity applications. She has provided expertise on machine learning for genomic pathogen surveillance for several international initiatives and is actively involved in the development of governance frameworks to ensure the safe and responsible development of technologies for health security.

Leonard Wossnig

CTO, LabGenius

Leonard Wossnig, Ph.D., is LabGenius’ Chief Technology Officer. In this role, Leonard leads a team of Data Scientists, Software Engineers, and Automation Experts to further enhance LabGenius’ data-driven platform capabilities. Alongside his industry role, he actively contributes to academia as an Honorary Research Fellow in Computer Science at University College London.

Prior to LabGenius, Leonard was VP of AI at Odyssey Therapeutics, where he led a team of machine learning experts to develop a computational platform for generative drug design in the areas of cancer and inflammation.

In 2018, Leonard co-founded Rahko, a quantum machine learning company merging computational chemistry, machine learning, and quantum computing to drive a better understanding of drug behaviour. 

Orr Yarkoni

Founder and CEO , Colorifix

Orr is a founder and Chief Executive Officer of Colorifix. After his early education in Portugal, Orr did his undergraduate, Masters and PhD degrees at Newcastle University, where he studied nanomaterials, biochemistry and synthetic biology. Orr went on to Jim’s Ajioka’s lab at the University of Cambridge to apply these skills to the arsenic biosensor project. From there they spun out a novel and sustainable approach to dyeing textiles using modified organisms to produce, deposit and fix dyes to fabrics.