Steering Committee

The Rt Hon. Lord Willetts FRS is the President of the Resolution Foundation. He served as the Member of Parliament for Havant (1992-2015), as Minister for Universities and Science (2010-2014) and previously worked at HM Treasury and the No. 10 Policy Unit.

Lord Willetts is a visiting Professor at King’s College London and an Honorary Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. He was Chair of the British Science Association He serves on the Board of UKRI and is Chair of the UK Space Agency. He co-chairs SynBioVen. He has written widely on economic and social policy. His book ‘A University Education’ was published by OUP in 2017 and a second edition of ‘The Pinch’ on intergenerational equity, was published in 2019. He is also a Trustee of the Booker Foundation.

Tabitha is the co founder of CogX, a festival and online platform. Alongside CogX, Tabitha is the chair of the UK government's AI Council and a member of the DCMS Digitial Economy Council and on the TechUK board. A serial entrepreneur, Tabitha was the co-founder of video distribution company Rightster (IPO 2011.)

Tabitha is the author of How To Talk To Robots - A Girlsguide to a World Dominated by AI. She's also an advisor to Tortoise Media, The Stack, TeensInAI, Raspberry Pi, CarbonRe, Monumo, Cambridge Innovation Capital and The Alan Turing Institute.

Dr Michael Anstey is a Partner specialising in life sciences investments.

Before joining CIC he was a Principal in the Healthcare Practice Area at The Boston Consulting Group’s (BCG) Toronto office. Michael has experience in advising multinational businesses across North America, Europe, India, and Japan.

Michael was also co-founder of an early stage biotechnology company focused on developing small molecule drugs that target protein-protein interactions implicated in disease. Prior to BCG, Michael was an Investment Analyst at Oxford Capital Partners.

Michael earned his DPhil in Zoology in the field of neurobiology from the University of Oxford.

Michael manages CIC's investments in Bicycle Therapeutics (NASDAQ: BCYC), Congenica, Storm Therapeutics, Immutrin, PredictImmune, Sense Bio, Start Codon, and Epitopea. He is also on the board of Cambridge&, an organisation dedicated to attracting the highest quality individuals and organisations from around the globe into the Cambridge ecosystem.

Amelia holds a BSc in Chemistry and Biology from Durham University and is a mentor on the Judge Business School’s Accelerate Programme.

Amelia joined Amadeus Capital Partners in 2009 and is a Partner in the Early Stage Fund. Her current investment focus is on autonomous systems, AI and machine learning, cloud computing, digital health, and medical technology.

She is a Director on several boards including Xampla, who has developed a plant-based material to replace single-use plastics; Paragraf which are manufacturing graphene-based electronic devices; Immense Simulations intelligent mobility enabling software company; Riverlane a developer of an operating system for quantum computers and SLAMcore, a spin-out from Imperial College, developing spatial intelligence for autonomous robotics and drones.

Professor Barnett has over 17 years’ experience of senior strategic leadership in the UK university sector. She is currently Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Anglia Ruskin University with strategic leadership responsibilities for research and innovation; the ARU Doctoral School; and student employability.

Professor Barnett has active research interests in the causes and mechanisms of cancer and ageing, and more recently in public health matters and has co-authored over 180 peer-reviewed original research papers. She has supervised, to successful completion, 21 PhD students. During her career, she has secured over £35 million of funding from a range of regional, national and international bodies to support successful teaching, research and innovation initiatives.

Yvonne is currently Trustee and Council member of the Royal Society of Biology; Director of Medilink Midlands; Academic Adviser for Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Board member of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, member of Harlow Growth Board, Co-Chair of the Ox-Cam ARC Universities Operational Group, Governor of ARU Peterborough and Immediate Past President of the Heads of University Centres for Biomedical Sciences. She has previously been an active executive member of a number of other learned societies and regional innovation agencies and initiatives.

Harriet was a career Diplomat for over 20 years with the Foreign Office, serving in 17 countries in various roles, including Deputy Ambassador as the Government’s Head of the national Life Sciences and Healthcare Trade Team.

Harriet has worked at the heart of the Cambridge business ecosystem since 2003 and was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honour’s List 2016. She was Chief Executive of One Nucleus from 2009 to 2017, which became the largest life science and healthcare membership body in Europe under her leadership. Harriet served as the Prime Minister’s Business Ambassador for Life Sciences for five years, undertaking a range of high-profile duties, and is currently the Director of Cambridge&, Chair of Cambridge Ahead and Founder of Harriet Fear Associates Ltd.

Shaun Grady is Senior Vice-President Business Development Operations, leading AstraZeneca’s Global transaction execution, due diligence and Alliance and Integration Management function. This includes early and late-stage Clinical programmes as well as on-market licensing and partnering, M&A, and divestments. His career background includes roles at ICI, Zeneca, and AstraZeneca in Corporate, Pharmaceuticals and US Legal departments, HR and Business Development. Shaun has worked on major projects including the AstraZeneca merger, creation of Avecia and Syngenta, acquisition of Cambridge Antibody Technology (CAT), MedImmune and Amylin, and the spin out of Albireo and more recently AstraZeneca’s Antibody Drug Conjugate collaborations with Daichi Sankyo. Shaun is an Honorary Fellow of the Judge Business School, a Fellow Commoner of Lucy Cavendish College, a Board Member at Healx, Prostate Cancer Research and Cambridge Arts Theatre and Chairman of the Board at Cambridge United Football Club.

Richard is responsible for the long-term evolution of the Arm architecture and has led its development for more than 20 years, beginning with Armv6. He is currently leading development on Armv9 to ensure its specialized processing unlocks new markets and opportunities across the full spectrum of compute.

In his early days at Arm, Richard worked on Arm720T, Arm940T, and Arm1136EJF-S. Prior to Arm, Richard worked for Analog Devices on fixed-function DSP, and at Inmos/ST on the Transputer.

Richard is an Arm fellow, has a BA in Electrical and Information Sciences from the University of Cambridge, and holds 107 patents in the field of microprocessors.

Neil Lawrence is the inaugural DeepMind Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge. He has been working on machine learning models for over 20 years. He recently returned to academia after three years as Director of Machine Learning at Amazon. His main interest is the interaction of machine learning with the physical world. This interest was triggered by deploying machine learning in the African context, where ‘end-to-end’ solutions are normally required. This has inspired new research directions at the interface of machine learning and systems research, this work is funded by a Senior AI Fellowship from the Alan Turing Institute. Neil is also visiting Professor at the University of Sheffield and the co-host of Talking Machines.

Dr. Richard Mason is Apollo Therapeutics’ chief executive officer. Richard has over 20 years’ experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, including leading Johnson & Johnson Innovation in Europe. Before this, he was CEO of novel anticoagulant antibody company XO1 until the company was acquired by Janssen in March 2015. Previously, Richard was the executive leadership team member responsible for strategy and business development at listed companies BTG Plc and Cambridge Antibody Technology Plc where he led numerous M&A and partnering transactions. Richard received degrees in medicine from St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College and immunology from University College London and trained in internal medicine in London. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. During 2020, he served on active duty with the British Army as part of the UK government’s pandemic response, including as a member of the UK Vaccines Task Force.

Jason is a scientist entrepreneur passionate about translating innovative technologies into more effective therapies and better patient outcomes. He co-founded Start Codon to identify and recruit high-potential and disruptive healthcare startups worldwide, seed fund them, and leverage the exceptional resources of the Cambridge (UK) Cluster with an aim to minimise risk and drive their success.

Previously, Jason was CEO of Cambridge Epigenetix which has developed a proprietary epigenetic biomarker discovery platform for the development of new diagnostic assays and the identification of novel drug targets. While at Cambridge Epigenetix, he led two successful fundraises (Series B and C) for a total of $49.8m.

Jason was awarded a Marshall Scholarship to obtain his PhD in Medicine from the University of Cambridge and has a BSc (Summa Cum Laude) in Molecular Biology and Chemistry from Tulane University.

Professor Andy Neely OBE is the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Enterprise and Business Relations at the University of Cambridge and former Head of the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM). He was the Founding Director of the Centre for Digital Built Britain and the Cambridge Service Alliance. Professor Neely is widely recognised for his work on the servitisation of manufacturing, as well as his work on performance measurement and management. He received an OBE for services to Research and to University/Industry Collaboration in 2020.

Gioria Longobardi is the Founder and CEO of Cambridge GaN Devices Ltd, a University of Cambridge spin-out. She came to Cambridge with an Erasmus programme and did a PhD in Gallium Nitride power devices and the analysis of trapping mechanisms.

She used these expertise to found GaN Devices Ltd. Cambridge GaN Devices have applications such as data centres power supplies, the CGD transistor can enable up to 10% savings in energy bills and can save millions of tons of CO2 emissions.

The company is now employing 43 employees and has recently raised $19m to scale-up and deliver millions of products to the market.

Diarmuid is the Chief Executive of Cambridge Enterprise; the organisation responsible for commercialising research from the University of Cambridge; with a mission to support the translation of leading-edge, world-changing ideas into major societal and economic benefit.

Cambridge Enterprise is responsible for patenting the ground-breaking research from the University of Cambridge, licensing innovative technology to global businesses, connecting our exceptional faculty with the challenges of international business through consultancy and cultivating the formation of the next disruptive technology businesses through our seed fund.

Diarmuid has twenty years’ experience connecting academic based research with the enterprise community. Previously he was the Chief Innovation & Enterprise Officer at Trinity College Dublin, where he had overall responsibility for the development and enhancement of the college’s innovation and enterprise strategy.

Prior to this, Diarmuid was Director of Trinity Research and Innovation with responsibility for both the Research Development Office and the Office of Corporate Partnership and Knowledge Exchange. In that role he led the establishment of the University Bridge venture fund, which is ranked in the world’s top five collaborative university funds, according to Global University Venturing.

Diarmuid was also the Executive Director of CRANN, an internationally recognised centre of excellence for nanotechnology and materials science research. He has held senior management roles in several university-founded start-up companies, including NTera, Xoliox, and Deerac Fluidics.

Diarmuid was a Research Fellow at Princeton University. He has a PhD in Physics from the University of Sheffield and a degree in Materials Science from Trinity College Dublin.

Diarmuid joined Cambridge Enterprise in August 2021.

Robert joined Cambridge City Council as Chief Executive in April 2021. Prior to that he was a Director at Social Finance, a non-for-profit social investment organisation. Robert has held leadership roles at the United Nations in New York, HM Treasury and the National Infrastructure Commission. Robert was a Fellow of Practice at the Government Outcomes Lab, Blavatnik School of Government, and has been a NED at various charities and social enterprises. He is currently a board member of New Local - a think-tank, a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts, and an avid supporter of the Mountain Bothy Association.

Ant is Vice President Cloud Systems Future and a Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft Research. He leads a team creating future technologies for the cloud from components to systems across storage, networking and compute. He has a DPhil and MEng from University of York and prior to working for Microsoft was a member of the Computer Lab and the Engineering Department at Cambridge University. Ant was awarded the 2016 ACM SIGOPS Mark Weiser Award and the 2021 ACM EuroSys Lifetime Achievement Award. In May 2010, he was elected as a Fellow of the British Computer Society, and in Sept 2020, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Dr Kristin-Anne Rutter joined Cambridge University Health Partners as the organisation’s Executive Director in March 2021, with a remit to lead the vision for life sciences in Cambridge, harnessing the talent, expertise and potential of the city’s cluster to deliver breakthrough scientific discoveries and rapidly prove and scale these to improve healthcare outcomes for all.

Previously as a Partner in McKinsey & Company’s London Office, her focus was on improvement and innovation in healthcare delivery. She led thinking on how digital and data can create value for patients and healthcare systems and how the barriers to successful adoption and uptake can be overcome. Kristin-Anne was the founder of the McKinsey Health Tech network in 2013, bringing together the most advanced and innovative tech and digital solution providers to healthcare and supporting them to deploy in health systems. She supported the UK government to identify opportunities to strengthen the UK Lifescience industry and the deployment of innovation in the NHS.

Prior to joining McKinsey, Kristin-Anne worked as a doctor in Iceland, had experience with Eli Lilly in manufacturing quality assurance and was a product manager for Neuromonics, a start-up company in Australia bringing a treatment for Tinnitus to market. She is currently a Trustee and Board member of Marie Stopes International. While at McKinsey Kristin-Anne spent a secondment with NHS Digital supporting their executive team accelerate programmes to support NHS priorities.

Kristin-Anne has a first class MA from Cambridge UK in Neuroscience, a MB BChir in medicine with distinction from Cambridge UK and an MBA from Harvard USA with high distinction.

Prof Emily Shuckburgh, Director of Cambridge Zero

Emily is a climate scientist and mathematician, a Fellow of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, an Associate Fellow of the Centre for Science and Policy, and a Fellow of the British Antarctic Survey. Emily is also Professor of Environmental Data Science at the Department of Computer Science and Technology. She leads the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training on the Application of AI to the study of Environmental Risks. A polar expert, Emily previously led a UK national research programme on the Southern Ocean and its role in climate. In 2016 she was awarded an OBE for services to science and the public communication of science. Emily is co-author with HRH The Prince of Wales and Tony Juniper of the Ladybird Book on Climate Change.

Rachel became Chief Executive of the City Deal in January 2017, and immediately prioritised a review of programme, engagement and governance in her early months, culminating in a refresh and renaming to the Greater Cambridgeshire Partnership in July 2017. Prior to this role, Rachel was Deputy Chief Executive and Director of Culture & Environment at the London Borough of Camden for 9 years. During this time one of her key achievements was overseeing the transformation of Kings Cross. Rachel has spent her career in local government, working mainly in the eastern region, including Hertfordshire, Essex and Suffolk county councils.

Dan was appointed as the Chief Executive at Cambridge Ahead in July 2023 having previously been Director of Policy and Programmes for four years. On behalf of Cambridge Ahead’s business and academic membership, Dan leads a programme of research and analysis driven by a focus on sustainable and inclusive growth into the long-term. This involves working closely with national and local policymakers so that Cambridge Ahead actively helps shape the future of the Cambridge city region.

Previously Dan worked at the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority as part of establishing the new Authority and focusing on place-making. This included developing the first Local Industrial Strategy for the region and instigating the Market Town Masterplans programme. Prior to the Combined Authority Dan worked in a variety of economic development and policy roles at Cambridgeshire County Council and Improvement East.

Dan is also a voluntary Board Member at Cambridge-based social enterprise The Edge.