Transforming UK translation conference

Dame Sue Ion FRS is Hon President of the National Skills academy for Nuclear. She was previously Chairman of the UK Nuclear Innovation Research Advisory Board (NIRAB). She represents the UK on a number of international review and oversight committees for the nuclear sector including the Euratom Science and Technology Committee which she chaired until late 2018. She is the only non US member of the US Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee on which she has served since 2005.

Sue spent 27 years with British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) rising to the position of Chief Technology Officer in 1992, a post she held until 2006 when she assumed a number of mainly voluntary roles in Science and Engineering, including membership of the UK Council for Science and Technology and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). She was Vice President of the Royal Academy of Engineering 2002-2008 and currently chairs its MacRobert Committee. Sue was Deputy Chair of the Board of the University of Manchester until September 2018 and currently serves on the Board of the University of Central Lancashire.

Her core expertise is in materials science and engineering associated with the nuclear sector. Sue is a member of the Chief Scientific Advisor for Wales’s Science and Innovation Advisory Council She has been a Visiting Professor in the Department of Materials at Imperial College since 2006, and holds an Honorary Professorship at the University of Manchester and is now Chair of the Royal Society Science, Industry and Translation Committee.

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Biography not yet available

Biography not yet available

Biography not yet available

John joined BNFL plc as a graduate trainee and progressed to the position of Head of Materials, leading a team of some 70 professional scientists and engineers. In this role, he became responsible for University Links and was instrumental in initiating and managing the successful University Research Alliance in Materials Performance at the University of Manchester in 2002.

After 27 years’ in the nuclear industry, John joined Alstom as Director of Materials and Chemistry and later assumed responsibility for University Relations worldwide.

In 2012 John became the Technical Director at M&I Materials Ltd, a family-owned, medium-sized enterprise. This role included setting policy for relationships with universities as well as initiating and managing such relationships.

John is a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining and of the Institute of Physics.

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Patrick is co-founder and co-CEO of IN-PART, an online match making platform for universities and companies. The system showcases research from over 220 research institutions around the world including MIT, Columbia, Oxford, Cambridge and Max Planck as well as other universities in the EU, Japan, Australia, South America and Hong Kong. 

To date IN-PART has raised £1.3M in angel and VC investment and brought together a company network in excess of 6,000, including all on the top 25 global R&D spenders. 

Patrick’s academic background is in law (LLB, LLM) with a professional background in multimedia publishing having worked for a number of years in London as a publisher for Globe Business Media Group. IN-PART currently has offices in Sheffield, London and Ottawa.

Malcolm has BSc in Pharmacology/Biochemistry and a PhD in Neuropharmacology. He has gained a wide breadth of experience in the management of research activities and has more than 60 publications including articles on the interface between industry and academia. For more than two decades he has managed Academic Liaison at GSK managing staff in the UK and US. His role involves close liaison with several groups outside the company e.g. Government departments, research and funding councils, small biotechnology companies and other science-driven organisations. He sits on many external bodies and several UK university department advisory groups.  He also chairs several groups including the Diamond (Synchotron) Industrial Advisory Board, the Science Industry Partnership addressing skill needs for scientists in England and the ABPI group working on academic liaison.

Malcolm was awarded a CBE in the 2009 Queen’s Birthday Honours List in recognition of his contribution to the pharmaceutical industry as well as an Honorary Professorship from the College of Medical and Dental Sciences at the University of Birmingham and honorary degrees from the Universities of Dundee and Hertfordshire.

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Biography not yet available

Biography not yet available

James is focussed on converting technology into viable companies. Over the last 20 years he has worked in the areas of digital health, drug delivery, veterinary MRI, sound and vibration instrumentation, either as turnaround CEO or NED.

He is currently assigned to the University of Southampton as one of the Royal Society Entrepreneurs in Residence and is leading a spin out in orthopaedic regenerative medicine. He is also NED on Octopus’ Apollo Venture Capital Trust.

His early career included a range of international management positions with Zeneca Agrochemicals (now Syngenta) as well as aid work in francophone Africa and Nepal. He has an MBA from INSEAD and a Natural Science degree from Cambridge.

Dek Woolfson is Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry; Principal Investigator of BrisSynBio, a BBSRC/EPSRC-funded Synthetic Biology Research Centre; Director of the Bristol BioDesign Institute at the University of Bristol; and Founder of Rosa Biotech.

Dek took his first degree in Chemistry at the University of Oxford, UK in 1987.  In 1991, he gained a PhD in Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge.  He then did post-doctoral research at University College London (1991 – 92) and the University of California, Berkeley (1992 – 94).  He returned to the UK to take up a Lectureship in Biochemistry at the University of Bristol (1994 – 95).  From 1996 – 2005 he was Lecturer through to Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Sussex.  He moved back Bristol in 2005 to a joint chair in Chemistry and Biochemistry.

Dek’s research is at the interface between chemistry and biology, and applies chemical methods and principles to understand biological phenomena such as protein folding and stability.  He has a long-standing interest in the challenge of rational protein design, and how this can be applied in synthetic biology and biotechnology. His particular emphasis is on making completely new protein structures not known to natural biology using a combination of rational and computational design.  The current focuses of his group are in the parametric design of protein structures, assemblies and materials; and in porting these into living cells to augment natural biology.

In 2011 Dek became the first recipient of the Medimmune Protein and Peptide Science Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry; in 2014, he received a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award, and he gained an ERC Advanced Grant; and in 2016 he won the Interdisciplinary Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Professor Andy Hopper is Treasurer and Vice-President of the Royal Society, Chairman of RealVNC Group and former Head of the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Cambridge University. His research interests include computer networking, pervasive and sensor-driven computing, and using computer technology to ensure sustainability of the planet. 

Andy has pursued academic and industrial careers simultaneously. In the industrial context he has co-founded thirteen spin-outs and start-ups, three of which floated on stock markets, as well as working for multinational companies. In recent years the companies he co-founded have received five Queen's Awards for Enterprise. 

Andy received the BSc degree from the University College of Swansea (1974) and the PhD degree from the University of Cambridge (1978). He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (1996) and of the Royal Society (2006). He was made a CBE for services to the computer industry (2007). He was President of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (2012). He is a recipient of the Royal Academy of Engineering MacRobert Award (2013) and the Royal Society Bakerian Medal (2017).