Speakers
Keynote speakers
Dr Mark Treherne, CEO, UKTI Life Science Investment Organisation (LSIO)
Mark has been actively involved in the pharmaceutical industry for over 25 years and raised funds for biotechnology businesses around the world. Mark initially trained as a neuropharmacologist at Cambridge University and previously led the neurodegeneration research group at Pfizer's main European research facility at Sandwich, UK, until 1997. He then a co-founded and was Chief Executive of Cambridge Drug Discovery Limited (CDD), leading the acquisition of CDD by AiM-listed BioFocus plc. He then became a Commercial Director of BioFocus, driving significant growth of its profitable services business.
Mark has now served on the Boards of 13 private and public biopharmaceutical companies. From 2002 to 2012 Mark served as Chief Executive of Senexis, a Manchester University spin-out that has discovered novel disease-modifying drugs for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. Mark then joined the newly formed Life Science Investment Organisation as Chief Executive in 2012.
Dr Liz Mear, Chief Executive, North West Coast Academic Heath Science Network
Dr Mear is Chief Executive of the North West Coast Academic Health Science Network and is currently the Chair of the Cheshire and Merseyside Comprehensive Local Research Network (CLRN). Prior to this role Liz was the Chief Executive of The Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust and has also worked at Executive Director level in the acute, mental health and ambulance sectors. Prior to joining the NHS Dr Mear held a variety of senior customer service roles within local government, social care and housing. She has also worked as a senior management consultant, specialising in public sector business performance improvement and change management.
Professor Mark E. Smith, Vice-Chancellor, Lancaster University
Professor Smith studied natural sciences at Churchill College, Cambridge before completing a PhD at the University of Warwick. After time in industry in Germany and with CSIRO in Australia, he was appointed to the University of Kent in 1992 and returned to Warwick as Reader in 1998. There he held roles within the Physics Department before being appointed Chair of the Faculty of Science in 2005, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research in 2007, and subsequently Deputy Vice-Chancellor. His external appointments include member of the Board of the UK Research Reserve; member of Ampere Prize Committee; member of the Board of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and member of Engineering and Physical Research Council's College since its inception, being a panel member on numerous occasions. He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Physics.
He was also a member of the UK Government Treasury/Financial Skills Council (2006-08) working group looking at issues concerning the supply of people for the wholesale financial services sector and was a member of the Russell Group Pro Vice Chancellors for Research Group. His research interests centre on applying advanced magnetic resonance techniques to understand a range of problems in materials physics including structural problems from disordered condensed matter such as glasses and nanocrystals.
Meet the experts
Dr Diane Cresswell, Executive Director, Business Development, Bionow
Diane originally joined the Bionow team in February 2006 when she managed a formal programme of strategic relationship management with the major companies in the sector. Diane has a BSc (Hons) degree and PhD in physics from the University of Liverpool and a strong background in technical manufacturing and operational management.
Bionow is a specialist business development and services company focused on the biomedical sector across the North of England. We provide innovative products and services that deliver tangible value, enabling our members to be the most productive and competitive in the world. Our members include biotech, pharmaceutical, healthcare and medical device companies and the specialist supply chain. Our offering spans procurement, insurance, recruitment, training, specialist events and access into a vibrant network of businesses, Universities and NHS organisations.
Dr Mark Bacon, Faculty Director: Business Partnerships & Enterprise, Lancaster University
His role of Faculty Director takes responsibility for the development, direction and delivery of a business partnerships and enterprise strategy for science and technology at Lancaster University. This strategy is delivered by a staff team of over 30 full-time roles. Via the development of a number of key themes, the strategy places significant focus on the development of collaborative research partnerships with business and other science and technology users and the use of partnerships to provide undergraduate and postgraduate students with the opportunity to work with potential future employers. The strategy also oversees the commercialisation of IP, the development and provision of professional training programmes and the use of dedicated facilities for the co-location of businesses onto the Lancaster campus, in both InfoLab21, the home of the School of Computing and Communications and the Lancaster Environment Centre.
In 2004 Mark was awarded a staff prize for commercialisation, in recognition of his development of outreach activities from the Lancaster Environment Centre and co-authored Lancaster's submission for the successful award of a Queen's Prize for Higher Education in 2010 to Lancaster University.
Ian Gordon, Senior Teaching Fellow, Lancaster University
Ian's career started in the Merchant Navy where he served as a radio officer working for P&O. This was followed by several years working in the oil industry as an instrument engineer for companies such as BP, Shell and Conoco. His launch into business came about when he started a training company for the mobile digital telecommunications industry, where he designed technical training programmes for all the major telecommunications companies including Vodafone, Orange, Sony, Motorola and Ericsson. After a successful sale of that business he launched a number of other companies in the construction and retail industries working as either Managing Director or Non-Executive Chairman.
Ian gained an Executive MBA from Lancaster University Management School in the 1995. After graduating, he became an occasional contributor to undergraduate entrepreneurship teaching, especially in business planning. In 2009, he agreed to increase his time commitment to the Management School, becoming the founding Entrepreneur in Residence at Lancaster. His core task has been to bring the entrepreneurial worldview into play to support the entrepreneurship staff revise their teaching and business engagement work. He has led a LEAD cohort, co-developed the GOLD programme, and was instrumental in launching the expanded Entrepreneurs in Residence initiative. Ian is now involved in piloting the new Top Team programme, which is aimed at senior managers working for entrepreneurs who have completed LEAD. His insights into entrepreneurial leadership, his promotion of the 'top team' model for business growth, and his enthusiasm to apply research findings in the small business context have each added massively to our work.
As founding EIR, Ian is ideally placed to assist the new and expanded intake to make best use of their valuable time and to ensure that LUMS takes full advantage of the expertise and acumen that this cadre will bring to a wide range of activities. His pioneering work has shown how the deliberate introduction of a 'permeable membrane' around the Institute for Entrepreneurship's organisational structure can bring benefit to teaching, research and business connectivity. We all look forward to his continued leadership of the expanded Entrepreneur in Residence programme.
Jane O'Brien, Director of Centre for Education, Training and Development (CETAD), Lancaster University
CETAD is a centre for excellence in Work Based Learning. Work Based Learning integrates university level learning with work so qualifications are relevant and useful in addition to being academically rigorous. CETAD offers a range of part time accredited short courses and postgraduate programmes in areas such as business/management and personal effectiveness. A joint programme with Biomedical and Life Sciences meets the specific needs of industry. CETAD offers a distinctive, innovative Negotiated Work Based Learning route which offers individuals and employers a highly bespoke route to postgraduate qualifications based around specific development needs and work requirements.
Professor John Goodacre MD PhD FRCP, Lancaster Medical School, Lancaster University
John is a leader of Lancaster University's Collaborative Partnerships in Health and Medicine knowledge exchange programme, which drives and supports the University's strategic partnerships with the public and private sector in research, innovation and professional development across all fields of Health and Medicine. Within this role, he is Director of the Lancaster Health Hub, a strategic partnership between Lancaster University, six local NHS Trusts and the University of Cumbria both to drive the growth of locally-led, collaborative research and innovation, and to develop local infrastructure and capability for these activities. The Hub has a major remit for supporting Industry engagement with NHS / university partnerships across Lancashire and Cumbria in the context of consultancy, R&D collaboration, product evaluation, staff secondments, professional development and other activities.
Until December 2013, John was Clinical Director of the NIHR Cumbria & Lancashire Comprehensive Local Research Network (CLRN), which was one of the most successful networks in the country for delivering clinical research, clinical trials and other high-quality studies. Since January 2014 he has been Medical Director of the North West Coast Academic Health Science Network (NWC AHSN), one of 15 AHSNs recently established by NHS England to increase the scope, scale, development and uptake of Innovation by the NHS.
John is Professor of Musculoskeletal Science in the Faculty of Health and Medicine at Lancaster University, and Honorary Consultant in Rheumatology at the Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. He undertakes a variety of advisory and leadership roles for the NIHR, as well as for UK and EU research councils and medical research charities. John was one of the first graduates in Medicine from Nottingham University. After completing his clinical training and obtaining MD and PhD degrees at Newcastle University he established and led a successful biomedical research team to study molecular mechanisms and treatments for arthritis and other autoimmune conditions. He was then appointed as Director of Clinical Research at the Lancashire School of Health and Postgraduate Medicine before taking up his current appointment at Lancaster University in 2008.
His specialist areas of knowledge lie within musculoskeletal science, clinical research and biomedicine. However, he has extensive experience in cross-sectoral collaboration, and in strategic leadership of large partnerships and networks.
Dr Paul McKenna, Business Partnerships Manager, Lancaster University
Paul has been working as a Business Partnerships Manager since 2011, within the Enterprise and Business Partnerships (EBP) team in the Lancaster Environment Centre. Through this role he identifies, develops and supports new collaborative research opportunities and partnerships relevant to a broad spectrum of expertise across LEC. Paul also handles relationship management of key research partnerships across LEC (e.g. Environment Agency) and a number of resident companies.
Paul provides support to members of staff considering opportunities for collaborative working both across LEC and with other partners to exploit new and more diverse income streams for research. He also provide projects management of post-award processes, project reporting and monitoring of major LEC research collaborations and projects.
Paul previously worked with the Associate Director for Research and Research Promotions Officer in carrying out preparations for LEC's submission to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) in 2014. Prior to this, he was the coordinator of a £1.2M Environment Agency Air Quality Umbrella Project and coordinated the first UK Conference on Energy Policy, "Will the lights go out?" in December 2004.
Dr Sally Spencer, Associate Director of Clinical Research, Lancaster University Faculty of Health and Medicine
Sally is the Associate Director of Clinical Research at the Lancaster Health Hub, a formal cross-sectoral partnership encompassing 6 NHS hospital trusts and 2 universities across the North West, supporting a healthcare research platform with academic and clinical expertise lancaster.ac.uk/fhm/health-hub. She is an editor for the Cochrane Collaboration Airways Group and the Cochrane Collaboration Dementia and Cognitive Improvement Group, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and an Affiliate of the James Lind Alliance. She is also an external examiner for postgraduate degrees at the universities of Salford, Hertfordshire and Southampton and an academic consultant for University Centre at Blackburn College.
Sally was a graduate of Southampton University and University of London, where she managed a research methods group working with the pharmaceutical industry on national and international clinical trials. Her teaching has focused on research design and evidence based practice, delivered at University of London, Kingston University and Brunel University. Her specialist areas of knowledge are in the development and evaluation of patient-reported outcome measures in healthcare and in the undertaking of systematic reviews. She also has extensive experience of project planning and leadership and of cross-sectoral working involving commercial, public, and charitable sectors.
She is currently involved in a number of funded research projects including a feasibility trial in heart surgery, a multi-centre national trial in shoulder surgery, and an exploratory study investigating a self-management system for patients with type II diabetes led by Mapmyhealth, a UK-based business. Her current post includes strategic leadership of the Lancaster Health Hub.
Jonathan Abra, Knowledge Transfer Networks
Jonathan Abra is a Knowledge Transfer Manager with the Environmental Sustainability Knowledge Transfer Network. He is an environmental scientist by training with a background in environmental consultancy and the minerals industry. He has an MBA from Lancaster University Management School and for a while ran his own marketing and business development consultancy. Jonathan works primarily with companies and academics in the water sector to help accelerate the development of novel and innovative technologies that address issues of water supply, quality or reuse. As a resident of Lancaster he is standing in this evening for Sue Dunkerton of the HealthTech and Medicines Knowledge Transfer Network who is unable to attend.