Trauma recovery: new science and technology for mental and physical health

BenevolentAI is a British held AI company which is using AI to augment the research capabilities of drug scientists, radically changing the way R&D is done.  Uniquely, BenevolentAI has an end to end capability from early discovery to clinical development. Jackie joined the company with over thirty years of experience in the bioscience research sector, working across academia and industry including leading neurology and gastrointestinal drug discovery and early clinical development for GlaxoSmithKline.  She has also been a champion of new business models such as open innovation in the pharmaceutical sector.

Jackie moved to BenevolentAI because she recognized the need for disruption in the industry and the need to apply novel advanced technologies to R&D to improve efficiency and increase the successful discovery of new medicines for patients. She was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours list for Services to the Pharmaceutical Industry and was recognized by Forbes Magazine as one of the top 20 Women Advancing AI Research. She is a member of the Biomedical Board for A*Star in Singapore and the Science Advisory Board for the Data Science Institute at Imperial College. She is also a visiting Professor at Imperial College and at St George's Hospital Medical School.

Russell Foster is the Head of the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology, the founder and Director of the Sleep and Circadian Research Institute and is a Fellow of Brasenose College Oxford. His research addresses how circadian rhythms and sleep are generated and regulated and what happens when these systems fail as a result of societal pressures or disease. A key finding was the discovery and characterization of an unrecognized light-detecting system within the eye that regulates circadian rhythms and sleep, and most recently, the translation of this work to the clinic.

For his work, Russell was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 2008 and the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2013. In 2015 he received the Order of Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for services to Science. He is a member of the Governing Council of the Royal Society; he established and led for six years the Royal Society Public Engagement Committee, and is a Trustee of the Science Museum. Russell has published over 250 scientific papers and has received multiple national and international awards. He has also written four popular science books.

Professor Sir Simon Wessely is Professor of Psychological Medicine and Regius Professor of Psychiatry at King’s College London and a Consultant Liaison Psychiatrist at King’s College and the Maudsley Hospitals.

Simon Wessely studied medicine and history of art at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and finished his medical training at University College Oxford, graduating in 1981. He obtained his medical membership in Newcastle, before moving to London to train in psychiatry at the Maudsley. He has a Master’s and Doctorate in epidemiology. He is a Foundation Senior Investigator of the National Institute for Health Research, past President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, current President of the Royal Society of Medicine and is also chairing the Independent Review into the Mental Health Act.

He has over 750 original publications, with an emphasis on the boundaries of medicine and psychiatry, unexplained symptoms and syndromes, population reactions to adversity, military health, epidemiology and others.  He founded the King’s Centre for Military Health Research, which is now the main source of information on the health and well-being of the UK Armed Forces past and present and has been Civilian Consultant Advisor in Psychiatry to the British Army since 2001, He has co-authored books on chronic fatigue syndrome, randomised controlled trials and a history of military psychiatry, although sadly none of them are best sellers.

He is active in public engagement activities, speaking regularly on radio, TV and at literary and science festivals. He is a trustee of Combat Stress and his contributions to veterans’ charities include cycling (slowly) eight times to Paris to raise funds for the Royal British Legion.