Jawdrop Summit: Breathing Life into the Life Sciences

Jawdrop is White City Innovation District’s (WCID) inaugural Life Sciences summit for academics, startups, scaleups, enterprise and investors.

WCID is fast emerging as a global economic hotspot in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, medicine, business (STEMMB), the arts and media.

This Life Sciences symposium has grown out of the thriving Deep Tech Network (DTN) set up by Imperial College London and Upstream in 2019. The DTN aims to encourage interaction and collaboration between business and academia and develop a deep-tech innovation ecosystem around Imperial’s White City Campus.

The summit will allow industry and academia to share their work in an in-depth manner with an audience of leading scientists, technologists, researchers and decision makers from across White City and other UK ecosystems.

PROGRAMME (full details to be confirmed)

12:30: Lunch, Networking & Technology showcase (Molecular Sciences Research Hub)

13:30: Welcome & Keynotes

13:55: Panel 1: Hard-wiring Collaboration into the Life Science community in White City

• Chris Williams, PhD (SVP, Corporate Development, Autolus)
• Dr Fiona McLaughlin (Chief Scientific Officer, Avacta)
• Steve Bates OBE (CEO, BioIndustry Association)
• Cllr. Stephen Cowan (Leader, Hammersmith & Fulham Council)
• Chair: Professor Oscar Ces (Head of Chemistry Department, Imperial College London)

14:45: Panel 2: AI for good business: using information better and more responsibly.

• Peter Buckman (Managing Director, Medidata Solutions)
• Jackie Hunter (Board Director, BenevolentAI)
• Neil Lawrence (DeepMind Professor of Machine Learning, University of Cambridge)
• Anjali Mazumder (AI and Justice & Human Rights Lead, The Alan Turing Institute)
• Co-Chair: Professor Aldo Faisal (Professor of AI & Neuroscience, Imperial College London)
• Co-Chair: Prof Sophia Yaliraki (Professor of Theoretical Chemistry, Imperial College London)

15:35: Networking break

16:00: Panel 3: How do we fund the life sciences? Reflections from investors in the ecosystem

• Dr. Avi Spier (Executive Director, Search & Evaluation, NIBR BD&L, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research)
• Leigh Brody, PhD (Albion VC)
• Dr. John Lee Allen (Managing Partner, RYSE Asset Management)
• Russ Cummings (Chairman, British Patient Capital)
• Martin Murphy (CEO and Chair, Syncona Investment Management)
• Chair: Tina Tan (Executive Editor, FirstWord HealthTech)

17:00: Networking Reception @Gateway Central, White City Place

19:00: END