Dame Kate Bingham

Kate Bingham is the former Chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, where she led a team of world-class experts from across industry, science, academia and government with the shared purpose of finding and manufacturing COVID-19 vaccines. The Taskforce helped place the UK at the leading edge of the international effort to fight the pandemic and it was the first Western country to start vaccination in December 2020. Kate was awarded a DBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in June 2021 for services to the procurement, manufacture and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.

Kate has worked in the biotech sector for 30 years and is a Managing Partner at life sciences venture capital firm SV Health Investors. She co-leads SV’s biotech franchise which has a long history of building high-value, successful new companies developing transformational new medicines and bringing drugs from discovery to market.

SV investments, many of which are examples of SV’s company creation approach to biotech investing, have resulted in the launch of 20 drugs including for the treatment of patients with inflammatory and autoimmune disease and cancer.

Kate is a board member of the Francis Crick Institute. She has a first-class degree in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford and an MBA from Harvard Business School (Baker Scholar). Kate advocates for more women in c-suite and board roles in biotech companies and in science generally.

Alexis Dormandy

Alexis has 30 years of experience in the commercialisation of technology, as CEO, investor, and board member. He originally trained as a doctor before embarking on a business career that began at McKinsey, followed by the Virgin Group. He ran his first Virgin business aged 26, and went on to join the Virgin Group board, where he was responsible for new businesses. He launched Virgin Mobile and Virgin Active, and later ran Virgin’s internet investments.

Alexis subsequently led the Consumer business at Orange, where he was also Chief Marketing Officer and helped grow the company to become the UK’s leading mobile operator. He then served as Managing Director at Candover, a large European private equity firm; at which time he was also European Chairman of RED, the AIDS charity founded by Bono. Alexis went on to become a Partner at Atomico, one of Europe’s leading technology investors, where he was also a member of their Investment Committee.

Most recently Alexis was CEO at Oxford Science Enterprises, a billion-pound investment company that creates transformational businesses based on the science discoveries of Oxford University. During his time there, he helped launch over 20 new businesses across deep tech, life sciences, and health tech; and sat on the boards of companies focused on everything from post-quantum computing, to early stage cancer detection, to nano-imaging technologies.    

 

Sarah Hunter

Sarah Hunter has built a career working at the intersection of technology, culture and public policy. She spent over a decade as Director of Global Public Policy at for X (formerly Google X) where she helped engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs invent and launch new technologies to solve some of the world’s most intractable problems. Prior to joining Google, Sarah was Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Senior Policy Adviser on Culture, Media and Sport in Downing Street. Since leaving Google she has become a prominent voice in the development and application of climate technology, leading panels at UNGAR, New York Climate Week and London Tech Week.

In 2023 she was appointed as one of two independent Non-Executive Directors on the board of the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), the new agency tasked with leading British breakthrough innovation in science and technology.

Since 2021 she has served as a Trustee of NESTA, the social innovation charity, and home of the UK’s ‘Nudge Taskforce’, a Non-Exec Director on the Board of Skateboard UK, and on the Advisory Board of Labour Together.

Sarah lives in Bath, England and enjoys spending time with her family, gardening, listening to 1990s hip-hop and reading spy novels.

Dame Fiona Murray

Professor Dame Fiona Murray DCMG is the Associate Dean of Innovation and the William Porter (1967) Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT School of Management. She received her BA and MA in Chemistry from Oxford, and PhD in Engineering Science from Harvard University.

Fiona’s work focuses on the intersection of science, technology, and entrepreneurship, the creation of innovation ecosystems, and the influence of geopolitics on innovation and entrepreneurship.  She is an international expert on the transformation of investments in science and technology into ventures that solve pressing global challenges and drive national and economic security.  Working across a wide range of countries, she has a special interest in the commercialization of university-based science and the design of public and private funding mechanisms that effectively scale spinout ventures. 

At MIT, Fiona is the director of MIT’s Office of Innovation, faculty founder of the MIT Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program, and faculty director of the MIT Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship.  She is a Fellow in Residence at The Engine – a venture fund and accelerator that accelerate the pathway for deep tech ventures and founders.

Fiona serves on the British Prime Minister’s Council on Science and Technology where her contributions have included the national science and technology strategy, the development of patient capital and the importance of international alliances.  She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (DCMG) in the 2023 New Year Honours List by His Majesty King Charles III for services to science, technology, and international engagement.  She is Vice Chair of the NATO Innovation Fund, the first multi-sovereign venture fund to support deep tech ventures with a focus on “defense, security and resilience” across Allied nations and Chairs the Fund’s work on safe capital.