Speakers BBMS 2023
Embrace the Future: What’s Achievable in the Next 10 Years?
Professor Peter John Barnes, FRCP, FCCP, FMedSci, FRS
Respiratory scientist and clinician
Peter Barnes is Professor of Thoracic Medicine at the National Heart and Lung Institute, was Head of Respiratory Medicine at Imperial College 1987-2017 and Honorary Consultant Physician at Royal Brompton Hospital, London. He qualified at Cambridge and Oxford Universities (first class honours). He has published >1500 peer-review papers on asthma, COPD and related topics and has written or edited over 50 books. He was recently named as in the top 10 most highly cited researchers in the world and has an h-index of 220 with >150,000 citations. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2007, the first respiratory researcher for over 150 years.
He is currently a member of the Scientific Committee of the global guidelines on COPD (GOLD), serves on the Editorial Board of over 30 journals and is currently an respiratory Editor of Up-to-Date. He has given several prestigious lectures, including the Amberson Lecture at the American Thoracic Society, the Sadoul Lecture at the European Respiratory Society and the Croonian Lecture at the Royal College of Physicians, London. He has received honorary MD degrees from the Universities of Ferrara (Italy), Athens (Greece), Tampere (Finland), Leuven (Belgium) and Maastricht (Netherlands). He was elected a Master Fellow of the American College of Chest Physicians and the Academy of Europe. He was President of the ERS 2013/14. In 2020 he was awarded the Trudeau Medal of the ATS and elected to Honorary Fellowship of the British Pharmacological Society. He was awarded the Imperial College Medal in 2022. His research has focused on cellular and molecular mechanisms of asthma and COPD and their treatments.
Professor Giles Yeo, MBE
Molecular endocrinologist
Giles Yeo got his PhD in molecular genetics from the University of Cambridge in 1998, after which he joined the lab of Prof Sir Stephen O’Rahilly, working on the genetics of severe human obesity. Giles Yeo is now a Professor of Molecular Neuroendocrinology and programme leader at the MRC Metabolic Diseases Unit in Cambridge and his research currently focuses on the influence of genes on feeding behaviour & body-weight. In addition, he is a graduate tutor and fellow of Wolfson College, and Honorary President of the British Dietetic Association.
Giles is also a broadcaster and author, presenting science documentaries for the BBC, and hosts a podcast called ‘Dr Giles Yeo Chews The Fat’. His first book ‘Gene Eating’ was published in December 2018, and his second book ‘Why Calories Don’t Count’ came out in June 2021. Giles was appointed an MBE in the Queen’s 2020 birthday honours for services to ‘Research, Communication and Engagement’. He won the Society for Endocrinology Medal in 2022.
Dr Robert Tensely
Partner at Cambridge Innovation Capital
Robert Tansley is a partner at the Cambridge (UK) based venture fund Cambridge Innovation Capital. CIC is a venture capital firm with >£500 million under management, investing in knowledge-intensive businesses in the Cambridge (UK) ecosystem across life sciences and deeptech, with approximately half their portfolio of 40 companies being spin-outs from the University of Cambridge.
Robert joined CIC in 2014 after spending 20 years in drug development, regulatory and commercial-isation roles in both large pharma (Sanofi, Roche), a regulatory authority (the MHRA) and early stage biotech (including founder/CEO of Treague, founding CEO of Avilex Pharma and CMO at KalVista). Robert qualified in medicine from University College London, and is a member of the Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists and the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine. He has an MBA from London Business School and an M.Phil in Biostatistics from the University of Cambridge.
Professor Miranda Wolpert MBE
Director of Mental Health at Wellcome Trust
Professor Miranda Wolpert is Director of Mental Health at Wellcome. Wellcome has made Mental Health one of its four key areas of focus (along with Climate and Health, Infectious Diseases and broad discovery research). Her work sets out to find and fund science that can support the development of effective early intervention could stop the escalation of Anxiety, Depression and Psychosis before they become lifelong, debilitating conditions, turning what are currently disabling chronic conditions into treatable acute episodes and stopping people being held back from achieving their life goals and contributing to society.
Miranda has a background as a clinician working for many years in child and family mental health in the NHS and has also worked as a policy advisors on mental health and informatics in the UK. Miranda retains her position as Professor in Evidence Based Research and practice at UCL where her research focuses on measuring outcomes of mental health treatments and making use of flawed data. Miranda was awarded an MBE for her services to children and young people’s mental health.
Dr Reema Patel
Research Director and Head of Deliberative Engagement at Ipsos
Reema Patel is a thought-leader in the fields of technology, data and AI ethics, public engagement and participation, and diversity, equity and inclusion. She is policy and public engagement lead for the ESRC’s strategic £4m+ investment into the digital good (the Digital Good Network). Reema has undertaken work at the cross-section of three fields- technology ethics, public engagement and diversity. Between 2018-2022 she co-founded the Ada Lovelace Institute where she established its work on public engagement and participation. She led the Institute’s public attitudes work on biometrics and facial recognition, and its work on social inequalities during the COVID19 pandemic response. She is an author of several Ada Lovelace Institute’s reports, including Beyond Face Value, Rethinking Data, The Data Divide and Participatory Data Stewardship . She also co-authored a report for On Think Tanks on the global evidence base for public engagement.
Dr Max Jacobs
Co-founder and CEO of DeepMirror
Max Jakobs holds degrees in Physics & Biology, published 9 peer reviewed publications in his PhD alone, and is an Enterprise Fellow at the Royal Academy of Engineering. In 2019, he co-founded DeepMirror to democratise Machine Learning in the Life Sciences. DeepMirror went on to raise £800k from Angel investors and UKRI grants and is now building the tech stack for the Biopharma industry.
Professor Vincent Mak
Vice Dean for Programmes & Research, Judge Business school
Vincent Mak is a Professor of Marketing & Decision Sciences (with tenure) at Cambridge Judge Business School, as well as the Vice-Dean for Programmes & Research at CJBS. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology – from where he obtained his PhD – prior to joining the Judge. Vincent's research lies in how people and firms make strategic decisions as they interact with each other, and what economic and psychological factors influence those decisions. His work has appeared in major journals in business research, economics and psychology. He has been interviewed by or has his research featured in media outlets including The Economist, The Independent, The Times, The Telegraph, Cambridge Business, BBC Radio 4, and BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, among others.
Dr Annie Ng
Science Lead, Kheiron Medical Technologies
Annie earned a Biomedical Engineering bachelors and PhD degree from Johns Hopkins and Oxford University, respectively. Annie has held leading roles in a number of research and startup environments ranging from product to scientist focused on mathematical modelling, product usability, and AI safety. The application areas of her work has included health tech, teleradiology, and mobile tech startups in Europe and the US. Annie now leads Kheiron Medical’s science team in evaluating the safety of AI products for real-world clinical use, leading on the design, development, and execution of clinical studies, trials, service evaluations, and ongoing performance evaluation for safety monitoring.
Dr Marcel Gherung
Co-founder & CEO of Cyted.AI
Marcel holds a PhD in Machine Learning in Healthcare from the University of Cambridge. Marcel was named on the Forbes 30 under 30 list, won the Alexander Fleming Prize from the Gates Foundation for his contribution to global public health and the Prix Galien Award for the best medical technology with Cyted’s core product, a novel test for the early detection of cancer in the oesophagus.
Dr Mike Denis
