Bench to Boardroom Speakers 2012
Sir Christopher Evans is regarded as one of Europe’s leading medical science entrepreneurs. He has a proven track record of establishing 45 successful, high-quality science companies, twenty of which have been taken public on 5 stock markets. Many of these companies have made substantial returns for their venture capital and institutional backers and employ more than 3,500 people. Of note is Chiroscience plc, started by Sir Christopher with $2 million in 1992 and grown to $1 billion by 1997 before merging with Celltech plc, which in turn merged with UCB to create one of Europe’s flagship bioscience enterprises. Sir Christopher’s considerable contributions to the biotechnology industry have been honoured with a Knighthood in the 2001 New Year’s Honours List and an OBE in the 1995 New Year’s Honours List. In 1987-1994, he created Cambridge’s first biomedical companies, starting the now famous Cambridge Cluster which has grown from Sir Chris’ earlier start ups to some 350 companies worth over $7 billion.
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Dr Alison Campbell OBE
Alison Campbell’s career has largely been at the academic-industry interface, both in industry and the public sector. As an independent consultant, Alison specialises in academic/business collaboration and commercialisation. Her areas of expertise include strategic planning; project management; business development; and technology transfer. She also delivers training and development, nationally and internationally.
Most recently, as Managing Director for King’s College London Business Ltd she ran research commercialisation and enterprise across the range of academic disciplines at the university. Her remit has included business development and collaboration, IP management, consultancy, out-licensing, start-up company creation, clinical trials, executive education, research management and capturing the impact of research and innovation. Previously Alison worked for the UK Medical Research Council, with responsibility for commercialisation of the intra-mural research programme. She has been Division Director within the MRC, Technology Transfer Group and was latterly CEO at MRC Technology. A graduate of University College London, she completed her PhD in chemical biology at Imperial College London and then moved into industry as a research scientist at Celltech Ltd.
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Professor Hal Sosabowski
will be presenting some of his explosive exhibitions at this years From Bench to Boardroom. He is the foremost Demonstration Chemist in the UK and is the RSC’s face of the International Year of Chemistry. In January Hal was the first chemist in history to cause explosions at the House of Commons, picking up where Guy Fawkes left off.
Hal will be bringing us demonstrations such as the
Exploding Ostrich Egg,
Manufacturing Liquid Oxygen,
Chemiluminescence,
YBCO Levitation and
the world’s biggest N2O/CS2 Barking Dogs.
His experiments from 09.00 – 10.00 will focus on the following:
Braving the elements: A Guided Tour of the Darker Reaches of the Periodic Table
Hal holds a Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Brighton.
He has a wide spectrum of science-on-television appearances, including children’s television where he co-presented the lab on ITV’s Ministry of Mayhem and BBC’s Bright Sparks, on which he had his own science slot. He has also appeared on mainstream science programmes such as BBC4’s The Volatile History of Chemistry, National Geographic’s The Mystery Files and BBC’s History Cold Case. He is the resident Science Boffin (how I hate that expression) for several local radio stations, Radio 4’s Broadcasting House and ITV’s Meridian News. He is/was Science Consultant for: Big Brother (Endemol TV), Only Fools on Horses (Endemol TV) Adventure Island (RDF Television) and Science Changed My Life (Outline Productions). He also consults for the Brainiac Live show, and has an international reputation for running live science. He is currently on tour with his iconic science show ‘The Bigger Bang’ – click here
Click here to view Dr Hal's live experiments.