Since being appointed as the first Chief Operating Officer of the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult in January 2013, Stephen has established the world-class industrialisation capabilities at both the Guy’s Hospital facilities in London, plus designed and built the innovative manufacturing centre in Stevenage. He brings over 20 years of biological medicine research, development, and manufacturing experience to the organisation. Stephen enjoys bringing cutting edge technologies to patients, by developing commercially viable products. Stephen is passionate about securing and growing the cell and gene therapy manufacturing and development supply chain. He is the current Chair of the BIA’s Manufacturing Advisory Committee, actively promoting and supporting UK biomanufacturing at Government as well as grass root level. His first degree was from the University of Birmingham, and his second degree from the Medical School of Southampton University.

Dr Kate Barclay is an Independent Consultant working across high impact Science and Technology industries with a passion for STEM education. As a Chartered Chemical Engineer and Fellow of the IChemE, she has spent over 20 years in the Bio-Pharmaceutical Industry as a Senior Leader in Global R&D across 3 large Pharma organisations leading technical and scientific project teams in clinical manufacture of parenteral, solid dose and inhaled dosage forms as well as developing novel device technologies.

Since 2013 Kate has been instrumental in developing apprenticeships across the Science Industry, leading the Life Sciences and Industrial Sciences Trailblazer employer group in development of new apprenticeship standards. She pioneered apprenticeship implementation across the science industry leading to the first cohort completing new standards in 2016 and has won multiple national awards for quality of apprenticeship delivery.

Kate has a passion for promoting opportunities for women in STEM, is an experienced vocational workplace assessor for apprenticeships and a Non-Executive Director of the Institute for Apprenticeships, assuring quality governance to apprenticeship and Technical Education reforms across England. Kate also volunteers as a Parent Governor and Enterprise Advisor to primary and secondary schools providing advice on career pathways and the many exciting opportunities within Science and Engineering.

Amy Mercer is a 22 year old Pharmaceutical Associate Scientist based at Pfizer (Sandwich, UK). Amy is a higher apprentice, working 4 days a week within the Drug Product Design department supporting the Material Sciences group and studying 1 day a week for a Bsc in Chemistry. Over the last four years Amy has spent time on early and later stage development of the drug product through work in active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) solid form screening, investigating the physical stability of the API in drug product and recently transitioning to the material characterisation team to provide support to solid formulation.
An enthusiastic and active advocate of STEM, Amy engages whenever possible with younger generations to share and promote her passion for science. As a firm believer in equal opportunities and a supporter of women in science Amy is keen to reach out to potential scientists of the future.

Chris is a Senior Manager within Process Sciences at Allergan Biologics (Liverpool, UK) with over 8 years of experience within the industry. In this role he leads teams to develop upstream processes for the manufacture of Biological APIs for Mammalian, Microbial and more recently Gene Therapy products. Prior to his current role, he has held positions as Cell, Strain and Fermentation Development Scientist, as well as Senior Process Development Scientist. Throughout his career, he has worked on the scale-up, optimisation, process characterisation/validation and technical transfer of upstream processes, whilst also evaluating new and emerging technologies. Chris holds BSc Biochemistry and Biological Chemistry from the University of Nottingham and MSc Industrial Biotechnology from Liverpool John Moores University.

Nick is responsible for overseeing the BIA’s operations, ensuring that all activities are professionally delivered to the highest standard. He will be providing an organisation-wide operational perspective to, and support for, activities and projects.

He has specific responsibility for office management/facilities, financial systems/processes and credit control, company secretariat, human resources and IT/telecoms. Nick joined the BIA in October 2014, bringing with him extensive industry and not-for-profit management experience.

Prior to this role he ran the Clinical Laboratory Division of Lab21. This involved providing specialist laboratory services to the healthcare, pharmaceutical and clinical trials markets. He had management responsibility for all operations, income, laboratory and customer services and client liaison across the Group. He also has specific experience of diagnostic testing within the HIV and HCV disease areas. This was gained through building Delphic Diagnostics into a one-stop-shop for clinicians, enabling more effective patient monitoring and subsequent treatment options.

Nick also has extensive management experience within the not-for-profit sector, working for a trade body representing and building the profile of the business communication industry.

Employed by GE Healthcare since 2001, Elles Steensma is the Global Product Manager for Security of Supply for chromatography resins. Her prior roles at the company include Protein Scientist in R&D and Quality Control Manager within Global Supply Chain. At Wageningen University, The Netherlands, Elles earned a BSc and MSc in molecular sciences as well as a PhD in biochemistry. She joined GE Healthcare after several years as a postdoctoral researcher at Uppsala University, Sweden.

Dr. Alvin W. Nienow is Emeritus Professor of Biochemical Engineering at the University of Birmingham, Visiting Professor at Aston University and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He has Honorary Doctorates from the West Pomeranian University (Poland) and Loughborough University. His research and papers (> 350) have mainly been on mixing, especially related to bioprocesses in stirred bioreactors applied to animal cells, bacteria, yeast, mycelia, plasmid DNA and most recently, stem cells on microcarriers, the latter being undertaken at Loughborough University where he is also Visiting Professor. Alvin has won several awards; Moulton and Donald Medals (Institution of Chemical Engineers), Lifetime Recognition Award for Mixing (European Federation of Chemical Engineering) and Jan. E. Purkyne Medal (Czech Academy of Sciences). He is also Honorary Member of the Czech Society of Chemical Engineering. He has consulted and taught courses for many companies in UK, Europe and USA and the FMP/BHRG industrial research consortium.

Matthew Cheeks obtained his PhD in Chemical Engineering at the University of Cambridge researching the industrial bioprocessing of lentiviral vectors. He also graduated with distinction from Oxford University’s executive MBA program in International Business.
Matthew’s professional career began at Lonza Biologics (Slough, UK), where he accumulated substantial expertise as a Lead Process Development Scientist. Afterwards he moved to Europe to work for Polpharma Biologics (Gdansk, Poland), a dedicated biosimilars manufacturer, where he helped establish commercial manufacturing processes (EPA-131798) and built out the upstream bioprocessing function from scratch.
In 2017 Matthew transitioned to MedImmune (Cambridge UK). As a director in the Bioprocess Development Unit he shepherds research and operational activities including high throughput process analytics, process development and pilot scale activities. Work spans a wide range of responsibilities right up to first time in human studies, enabling industrial manufacture of innovative biopharmaceutical drugs.

In his current position within Pall Biotech, Peter Levison is responsible for developing strategic partnerships within the Biotech community through the management of a global Key Opinion Leader network. Working with key industrialists and academics around the world, Peter is actively looking for solutions to tomorrow’s challenges today. Previously he has held a global product management leadership role for the continuous processing portfolio of products and process chromatography columns and systems. He joined Pall in July 2003 and has over 25 years experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, holding positions of increasing responsibility in research and development, technical management, and product management.

Dr. Levison holds a BSc (Hons) Class I in Biochemistry from the University of Manchester, Manchester, UK and a PhD gained in the Dept. of Biochemistry, University of Manchester. He has an MBA awarded through the Open University Business School, Milton Keynes, UK. He is a member of various professional bodies and has the status of C.Chem, FRSC (Chartered Chemist and Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in the UK) and C.Biol, FRSB (Chartered Biologist and Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology in the UK).

Cobra Biologics: International the global biopharmaceutical industry.
3 facilities, 2 in Sweden and 1 in the UK, 245 employees
Orders £40m in 2017, 85% exported >50 customers
Queens Award for International Trade 2018
Bionow Company of the Year 2017
£15m Advanced Therapy Expansion Plan 2017-2019
£3m government grant awarded in 2017

Prior to his appointment as CEO in 2011, Peter was also the Cobra CFO from its IPO in 2002, through to its acquisition and subsequent separation from Recipharm. Before Cobra he was employed in a number of senior financial and corporate development roles. Peter was awarded an MBA with distinction jointly from the Manchester Business School and the University of Wales.

He is also currently the CFO of Prokarium Limited which is a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing vaccination and cancer immunotherapy solutions using synthetic biology. The company recently completed a successful $10m fund raising in Jan 2018.

Kit is Strategic and Transformational Venture Manager at Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies where he previously worked as a Biochemical Engineer until Lean Six Sigma was introduced in the business and he moved into R&D continuous improvement.

The adaptation of some of the tools to the lab environment was essential and subsequent Black Belt qualification has shown that R&D departments can embrace LSS. Kit has subsequently applied LSS to quality and engineering. Kit has a first degree from Nottingham University in Chemical Engineering and a PhD from Cambridge University in Chemical Engineering and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chemical Engineers. Kit has also worked in a volunteer sector where he managed a church for two years.

Melissa is European Lead and Analytical Sciences expert at Pfizer Global R+D labs (Sandwich, UK). She is an expert in the global Technology and Innovation team who use their knowledge to provide a lens on the dynamic external innovation ecosystems that have the potential to impact the Small Molecule Pharmaceutical Sciences development organisation. They use this knowledge to inform the shaping and delivery of the technology and innovation strategy and vision for the organisation and to facilitate collaborations with external organisations to achieve this strategy.

In previous roles Melissa has been the Analytical Lead for development programmes prior to regulatory filings and has represented Pfizer in these programmes in front of regulatory agencies including the FDA. Prior to Pfizer, she was employed in the Department of Pharmacy, Kings College London as Lecturer in Separation Sciences and led a research group. Melissa is now a Visiting full Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Warwick, a Fellow of the RSC, an elected RSC Council member, the President of the RSC Analytical Division and chair the UK Analytical Chemistry Trust Fund. She represents Pfizer on the EFPIA Analytical Methods Working Group and also sit on the British Pharmacopoeia Analytical Quality by Design Working Party.

Damian Marshall is the head of analytical development for the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult. He has almost 20 years’ of industrial experience focussed on the development of cell therapies and the integration of new technologies for product characterisation. His team works closely with a wide range of therapy developers, implementing analytical approaches to support the clinical and commercial development of their products and addressing some of the fundamental challenges faced by the cell and gene therapy field.

Dr. Stephen Goldrick interests lie in the application of multivariate data analysis (MVDA) and first principle mathematical modelling to the biotechnology sector. He is currently working in the UCL-MedImmune Centre of Excellence as a research associate specialising in bioprocess multivariate statistics and chemometrics. His main focuses involves analysing data sets from both upstream and downstream processing to evaluate process operation improvements and optimise final product titres whilst maintaining consistent product quality.

Allan joined Envigo in June 2014 as Director of Biopharmaceutical Development in order to assist the company in developing its strategic direction for CMC. More recently he has taken up the position of Scientific Director CMC to help expand the scientific capabilities/services in the CMC Division, in both physico-chemical analysis and cell biology/immunology.

He has a BSc in Biochemistry (Leeds University) and a PhD in Physiological Biochemistry (Imperial College, London). This was followed by 10 years post-doctoral academic experience in R&D, including at the N.I.H. in Bethesda, U.S., and then 20 years+ in industrial research. Over the last 10 years+ he has been involved in Vaccine Development, with Avecia Vaccines and Pharmathene UK, specializing in formulation, analytics, cGMP manufacturing, and stability. He is an author on several peer reviewed scientific papers and patents, including recent publications on vaccine analysis and formulation.