Galien week of innovation

Professor Sir Munir Pirmohamed (MB ChB, PhD, FRCPE, FRCP, FFPM. FRSB, FBPhS, FMedSci) is David Weatherall Chair in Medicine at the University of Liverpool, NHS Chair of Pharmacogenetics, and a Consultant Physician at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital. 

He is Director of the Centre for Drug Safety Sciences, Director of the Wolfson Centre for Personalised Medicine, and Director of HDR North.  He is also leading a recently awarded Centre for Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation in Pharmacogenomics. 

He is an inaugural National Institute for Health and Care Research Senior Investigator, Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in the UK, and Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine. 

He is Chair of the Commission Human Medicines, and a medical trustee for the British Heart Foundation.  He was President of British Pharmacological Society from January 2020-December 2021, and President of the Association of Physicians in 2023. He was awarded a Knights Bachelor in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2015. His research focuses on personalised medicine, clinical pharmacology, data science and drug safety in a variety of disease areas.  He has published over 700 papers and has an H-index of 127.

Niklas Hedberg is the Chief Pharmacist at the Swedish national governmental authority, the Dental and Pharmaceuticals Benefits Agency (TLV).

Niklas is the Co-Chair of the HTAR Coordination Group with special expertise in pharmaceuticals. He was the Chair of the Consortium Executive Board for EUnetHTA21 (2021-2023) as well as the Chair of the EUnetHTA JA 3, Executive Board between 2018 and 2021.

Niklas has been working with pricing and reimbursement since 2001. He has held positions as medical assessor, project leader, Head of the Department for New Submissions (between 2009 and 2014) and he is now the Chief Pharmacist.

Niklas has a broad experience of different aspects of value based evaluation and over time has seen the increasing importance for health technology assessment (HTA) both across health care systems and on local level to prepare accurate decision making.

Among Niklas special interests have been the early development of joint scientific advice in 2009 and onwards (pilots both nationally with MPA and on European level with EMA) and strategic discussions about RWD.

Sam Roberts is the Chief Executive of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

She has worked in healthcare for 20 years in a combination of clinical, operational, private sector and academic roles. She originally trained as a doctor before undertaking an MBA and joining McKinsey and Company. Her focus for the last 15 years has been on improving quality of clinical care and supporting uptake of innovation - as Head of Operations at a large teaching hospital in London (UCLH), Director of Innovation, Research and Life Sciences at NHS England and Improvement and Chief Executive of the Accelerated Access Collaborative.

Prior to joining NICE she invested in early stage digital health and diagnostics companies. She has an academic interest in the influence of health economic analysis on policy and clinical practice, having worked at the London School of Economics followed by doctoral studies at the University of Oxford.

Valentina Strammiello currently holds the role of Director of Strategic Initiatives at the European Patients Forum. On behalf of EPF, she brings the patient perspective in HTA.

She has been an active contributor to shaping the HTA Regulation since 2017.

Before joining EPF, Valentina worked as freelance Open Source Intelligence analyst in Security and Energy sectors. She is among the founders of ecpa2.0 (European Centre for Public Affairs 2.0), a Brussels-based forum of young professionals in Public Affairs. She holds master’s degrees in International Relations and in European Studies.

Steffen Thirstrup is a medical doctor and board-certified specialist in clinical pharmacology and therapeutics. He holds a PhD in pharmacology and has a long background in clinical internal medicine with special emphasis on adult respiratory medicine.

Additionally, Dr. Thirstrup was appointed adjunct professor in pharmacotherapy at the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Copenhagen, in 2012.From 2004-09 Steffen Thirstrup worked at Danish Medicines Agency first as the Danish member of CHMP at the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for five years including 10 months as joint CHMP- and CAT-member, followed by a short period as head of Danish Institute for Rational Pharmacotherapy dealing with HTA and best practice guidelines for primary care.

In 2011 Prof. Thirstrup rejoined the licensing division at the Danish Medicines Agency acting as Head of Division for Medicines Assessment and Clinical Trials. During this period Prof Thirstrup co-chaired the European Commission’s working group on market access for biosimilars medicinal products and acted as key scientific contact for the managing entity of the IMI beneficiaries for the PROTECT collaboration (Pharmacoepidemiological Research on Outcomes of Therapeutics by a European ConsorTium).

In March 2013, Prof Thirstrup joined the pharmaceutical consultancy company NDA Group AB as a full-time medical advisor on NDA’s regulatory advisory board. In April 2014 Prof Thirstrup was appointed as director for the Regulatory Advisory Board at NDA Regulatory Services Ltd.

Since June 2022 Prof Thirstrup has been the Chief Medical Officer at the European Medicines Agency, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Dr June Raine DBE is CEO of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.

She trained in medicine in Oxford after completing a master’s degree by research in Pharmacology.  Her interest in drug safety led to a career in medicines regulation which has spanned a number of roles in assessment, management and strategic development within the UK national authority.

She was elected in 2012 as the first chair of the European Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee and is also co-Chair of the WHO Advisory Committee on Safety of Medicinal Products.

Her special interests are in monitoring the outcomes of regulatory action, risk communication and patient involvement in the regulatory process.

Dan O'Connor is medically (Leicester) and PhD (Imperial) qualified and currently the Director Regulatory and Early Access Policy at The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI). He joined the ABPI from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency in 2023 where he was Deputy Director of the Innovation Accelerator and Regulatory Science. Dan has special interests in drug development, rare diseases, regulatory science, early access, health innovation, patient engagement and drug repurposing. He completed higher medical training in Pharmaceutical Medicine.   He is Editor-Author of the Oxford Specialist Handbook in Pharmaceutical Medicine.

François is a patient advocate since 1989, firstly in HIV/AIDS, and then in rare diseases since 2003 when he joined Eurordis. He represents Eurordis at the European Medicines Agency and at the EU Stakeholder Network for Health Technology Assessment. His expertise includes patient engagement in thee design and conduct of clinical trials / Community Advisory Boards.

He is Secretary of the GetReal Institute for Real-world Data.

Janet Woodcock recently completed a long career at FDA. She served as Director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research for over twenty years in several stretches.

Most recently she served as Principal Deputy Commissioner and prior to that as Acting FDA Commissioner.

She held multiple other senior positions at FDA including at the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.

She was the therapeutics lead for "Operation Warp Speed" during the COVID pandemic.

Her most recent effort was spearheading a major reorganization of FDA's foods program and the Office of Regulatory Affairs.

Dr. Woodcock completed many major regulatory initiatives during her FDA tenure.

She was instrumental in getting the biosimilars legislation enacted and worked to ensure adoption in the clinical community.

Additionally, she worked with industry and Congress to bring about the first GDUFA.

After passage of the legislation, she oversaw an extensive reorganization of the generic drug review program at CDER, that successfully met the aggressive targets of the legislation and led to eventual reauthorizing, with elimination of backlogs and approval of thousands of generic drugs.

Tony was appointed Chief Scientific Officer designate on 19 January 2022 and became Chief Scientific Officer, with full accountability for GSK R&D, with effect from 1 August 2022.

Tony is a highly respected scientist and one of the world’s pre-eminent medicinal chemists, with more than 30 years of experience working across diverse disciplines of R&D to deliver innovative medicines. He joined GSK from Pfizer in 2017 as Senior Vice President, Medicinal Science and Technology, responsible for all science and technology platforms supporting the delivery of new medicines. He has led large-scale global organisations in drug discovery and development in multiple therapeutic areas, including immunology, oncology and infectious diseases. Tony has been integral to delivering the recent improvements in GSK’s R&D productivity and central to developing its R&D approach focusing on science of the immune system, human genetics and advanced technologies. He built GSK’s functional genomics and AI/ML organisations from the ground up, and was the architect of collaborations with UK biotech Adrestia, Oxford University, and the Laboratory for Genomics Research with Jennifer Doudna. Tony invented an HIV antiviral medicine for which he won several international awards including the PhRMA Discoverers Award, the Prix Galien USA, the ACS Heroes of Chemistry Award, and the UCB Ehrlich Award from the European Federation of Medicinal Chemistry.

Tony has lived and worked in both the UK and the US. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, from whom he has also received an Honorary Fellowship, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology. Tony was closely involved with the UK Government’s COVID-19 planning, notably establishing the GSK/AstraZeneca/Cambridge University testing facility at the University’s Anne McLaren Laboratory. Tony has a BSc in chemistry and PhD in organic synthesis from the University of Newcastle, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Imperial College, London.Lawrence became the Chief Executive of the MHRA in April 2025. He joined the Agency at a pivotal time for UK healthcare and life sciences, with the Government setting out its aspirations in the NHS Ten-year Plan and the Life Sciences Sector Delivery Plan, both of which will be enabled by safe, agile and risk-proportionate regulation of medicines, novel treatments and technologies. Lawrence has described his plans for the MHRA to set the gold standard in safety and surveillance, to accelerate access to new medicines and treatments and to make a major contribution to research and innovation in UK life sciences. Before joining the MHRA, Lawrence spent five years as Deputy Chief Executive at Guy’s and St Thomas’ (GSTT) NHS Foundation Trust. During Covid-19, he secured vital international supplies of medical equipment for the Trust and the wider UK. He led the successful merger of GSTT with the Royal Brompton and Harefield hospitals in 2021. His role included oversight of the organisation’s strategy, technology, innovation, commercialisation and multiple major strategic change programmes. 

Naveed Sattar is a Professor of Cardiometabolic Medicine in Glasgow. He has accumulated considerable expertise in obesity from clinical care, epidemiology, guidelines and trials of medicines and lifestyle interventions.

He has co-authored over 1400 papers which have been cited >200K, and contributed to over 10 international and national guidelines. He is Chair of the Obesity Health Care goals programme, working with others to make the UK a better place for future trials of weight loss drugs. He has been awarded several national and international awards for his work and is currently an associate editor for Diabetes Care.

Rachel joined Lilly in 2023, prior to this she had spent 30 years in clinical practice, and held the role of Professor of Obesity, Diabetes and Endocrinology at University College London (UCL) and Honorary Consultant at University College London Hospital (UCLH).

She is recognised globally for her ground-breaking research that identified gut hormones as treatments for obesity and for her clinical expertise in managing people living with obesity.

Rachel has played a key role in defining national and international guidelines for obesity management, as a member of multiple guideline development and consensus groups including National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), European Association for the Study of Obesity (EASO), International Federation for the Surgery for Obesity and metabolic diseases (IFSO) and Lancet Commission on the Definition and Diagnosis of Clinical Obesity.

In 2022, she was awarded an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) by the late Queen Elizabeth II for services to people with obesity. This was in recognition of her 25-year career dedicated to improving the health of people living with obesity, spanning from basic research, through Phase 1 to 4 clinical trials to influencing public policy.

Melanie Davies is Professor of Diabetes Medicine at the University of Leicester and an Honorary Consultant Diabetologist at the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust. She is the Co-Director of the Leicester Diabetes Centre, University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust.

Professor Davies’ research interests include the causes, screening, prevention, self-management and treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus. She is a National Institute for Health Research Senior Investigator Emeritus and Director of the NIHR Leicester Biomedical Research Centre and co-chair of EASD/ADA’s Consensus Report on T2DM Management.

Professor Davies has published over 960 original articles and has over £125M of grant funding. She was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) in the 2016 New Year’s Honour’s List for services to diabetes research.

Simon qualified from the London Hospital Medical College in 1986 and specialised in general practice. As a Wellcome Training Fellow he undertook doctoral study in Clinical Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Southampton and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, before being appointed as a University Lecturer in Cambridge in 1998. In 2005 Simon joined the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit as Assistant Director and was appointed Professor of General Practice in May 2013.

Simon is an Honorary Doctor at Umeå University Sweden, Honorary Consultant at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and NHS England and Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal College of General Practitioners. He undertakes two surgery sessions per week at Lensfield Medical Practice in the centre of Cambridge.

His research contributes to efforts aimed at preventing the growing burden of diabetes, obesity and related disorders by translating epidemiological knowledge into preventive action, and evaluating the effectiveness of a range of strategies from behaviour change to screening. He has completed over 40 trials and authored over 500 publications which have been cited over 42000 times, but what he really likes to do is surf.

Vicki Mooney is a Patient Advocate, Public Speaker, the Executive Director of the ECPO and Chairperson of the Board of ICPO.

Originally from Ireland, now living in Lanzarote, Vicki uses her voice to help address the stigma, bias and discrimination perpetrated against people living with Obesity. Whilst not only working on various projects across Europe & now globally as a co-chair of GOPA, to ensure we see better access to quality treatment, management and education, but also to help drive forward prevention of obesity across Europe and the globe.

Kathryn M. Abel is Professor of Psychological Medicine and Director of the Centre for Women’s Mental Health at the University of Manchester.

She is an Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist for Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Trust where she is also co-Director of the GM Digital Research Unit. She has been at the forefront of delivering mental health research in NHS and academic settings to inform policy and practice and her work underpins important policy and service developments for women in services. She was the NIHR CRN National Speciality Lead for Mental Health for a decade delivering high quality research for NHS patients, is an NIHR Senior Investigator and a European Research Council Fellow. 

Andrew Grill is a globally recognised AI expert, futurist, and tech industry leader with over 30 years of experience driving innovation and success within technology companies.

Ranked among the world’s top 10 futurist speakers and a finalist for Digital Leaders AI Expert of the Year, Andrew is renowned for delivering insightful, action-oriented keynotes that resonate with audiences worldwide. As a former Global Managing Partner at IBM, Andrew has worked closely with board-level executives from Vodafone, Adobe, DHL, Nike, Nestle, Bupa, Wella, Mars, Sanofi, Dell Technologies, and the NHS. His expertise spans critical topics such as AI, Web3, digital transformation, and workplace innovation, making him a trusted advisor across multiple industries.

Professor Michael Browning is an academic psychiatrist who leads a research laboratory that bridges the gap between scientific discovery and patient care. His work focuses on understanding how the brain and mind work in psychiatric conditions by using advanced computer models.

He uses these insights to develop and test new treatments, including both talking therapies and medications. Professor Browning runs a specialized clinic in Oxford for people with depression that hasn't responded well to standard treatments. His work brings together scientists, doctors, and patients to advance our understanding and treatment of mood disorders.

Vanessa studied at the University of Nottingham, completing her Geography PhD within the field of mental health research. That began a 30 year research career working alongside people with mental health issues including at Kings College London and Rethink Mental Illness, honorary academic positions at UCL and University of Plymouth, as well as leadership of the Alliance of Mental Health Research Funders.

Today she leads the specialist mental health research charity she co-founded, building collaborations to deliver peer research, coproduction and public involvement programmes including within the mental health mission, UKRI mental health platform, Wellcome and NIHR funded projects.

Lawrence became the Chief Executive of the MHRA in April 2025. He joined the Agency at a pivotal time for UK healthcare and life sciences, with the Government setting out its aspirations in the NHS Ten-year Plan and the Life Sciences Sector Delivery Plan, both of which will be enabled by safe, agile and risk-proportionate regulation of medicines, novel treatments and technologies. Lawrence has described his plans for the MHRA to set the gold standard in safety and surveillance, to accelerate access to new medicines and treatments and to make a major contribution to research and innovation in UK life sciences. Before joining the MHRA, Lawrence spent five years as Deputy Chief Executive at Guy’s and St Thomas’ (GSTT) NHS Foundation Trust, one of the largest and most prestigious healthcare provider organisations in the UK. During Covid-19, he secured vital international supplies of medical equipment for the Trust and the wider UK. He led the successful merger of GSTT with the Royal Brompton and Harefield hospitals in 2021, creating a power-house of cardio-respiratory medicine and research. His role included oversight of the organisation’s strategy, technology, innovation, commercialisation and multiple major strategic change programmes. 

In the decade prior to that, Lawrence worked in a range of executive strategy and leadership roles in university hospitals in the UK and Middle East. He was Director of Strategy, Planning and Performance at University Hospitals Birmingham, Managing Director of the Shelford Group of UK university hospitals and an Executive Director at Hamad Medical Corporation in Qatar, one of the leading academic medical centres in the Middle East.   Lawrence began his career working for the UK Government in Whitehall, as a fast stream civil servant at the Department of Health and Social Care, before working for the Secretary of State for Health and running the headquarters of the NHS Chief Executive. He worked on a range of high profile national policy issues, working across government and with No.10 Downing Street, Her Majesty’s Treasury and the Cabinet Office, and becoming a senior civil servant within the Department of Health and Social Care.  He holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in History from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and a Master’s degree in Global Health Policy from Imperial College London. He is a fellow of the Sciana Network of European health leaders.