Dr Susan Pond AM is a physician, scientist and company director with deep expertise in biotechnology. She qualified with first-class honours in medicine and surgery at the University of Sydney, Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of New South Wales, and Doctor of Science degree and Doctor of Medicine honoris causa from the University of Queensland. She was Professor of Medicine at the University of Queensland and chaired the Australian Drug Evaluation Committee. Dr Pond then held executive positions in the biotechnology industry, including as Chairman and Managing Director of Johnson & Johnson Research Pty Ltd. Thereafter, she served as non-executive director in industry, academia and government, directed the University of Sydney Nanotechnology Institute, chaired AusBiotech Ltd, chaired the NSW Smart Sensing Network, and continues as non-executive director of several organisations and as member of Council of the Queensland University of Technology. Dr Pond has been President of the Royal Society of New South Wales (RSNSW) since 2021. She is a Fellow of the RSNSW, the Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE) and the Academy of Health and Medical Sciences (AAHMS).

Dr Burns is Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Amplia Therapeutics. He is an experienced drug discovery leader who has worked in various roles in pharma, biotech and academia for 30 years. He has a PhD in chemistry from the University of Melbourne and following postdoctoral studies in the USA and working at Pfizer UK, he returned to Australia, where he forged his career leading high performing teams in drug discovery research. As Head of Medicinal Chemistry for Cytopia, Chris led teams in the discovery of two anti-cancer agents that entered clinical trial, including momelotinib, which has recently been approved for the treatment of myelofibrosis. He later worked at WEHI as a Laboratory Head, before moving into executive and leadership roles with privately held biotechnology companies, including Certa Therapeutics and MycRx. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK) and the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. He was the recipient of the 2022 Adrien Albert Award for sustained, outstanding research in the field of medicinal chemistry or chemical biology.

Dr. Carter is Business Development Portfolio Manager at QIMRB, where she leads programs to develop early stage drug discovery and medtech innovation. Previously, Shea was a Principal Scientist at Novartis Institutes of BioMedical Research (NIBR), where she ran pre-clinical drug discovery projects in musculoskeletal and inflammatory disease areas for 8 years. Shea’s experience is primarily with small molecule drug discovery, with extensive experience in target validation and target ID technologies. She has led multidisciplinary drug discovery teams, including chemistry and in vivo pharmacology, and worked closely with computational biologists to map MoAs of drug candidates from phenotypic screens and to identify druggable targets from genetic datasets (CRISPR and siRNA screens, GWAS). During her time at Novartis, she was also a scientific advisor on selected NIBR BD&L opportunities and worked with the team at Novartis Venture Fund to review investment opportunities from early stage start-up companies across a broad range of therapeutic areas.

Dr. Dymock is Head of QEDDI, UniQuest, working on small molecule preclinical drug discovery. He has greater than 25 years’ experience in drug discovery research and development in pharmaceutical companies, biotech and academia. He was Associate Professor in Medicinal Chemistry at the National University of Singapore and previously Head of Chemistry for S*BIO Pte Ltd in Singapore, where his team was responsible for the discovery of Pacritinib, Pracinostat, TG02, VS-5584 and two other clinical candidates. Pacritinib was approved by the FDA in 2022 for myelofibrosis patients with low platelets. Brian led the chemistry team at Vernalis which discovered Luminespib in collaboration with the Institute of Cancer Research. Brian has also been a Department Manager at Evotec and a Team Leader at Roche UK. He earned his PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Glasgow. Brian has served as an Editorial Advisory Board Member for the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

Prof. Philip Hogg graduated with a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Queensland. Following post-doctoral training in the USA and Sweden he returned to Sydney as a NHMRC RD Wright Fellow and is now a NHMRC Level 3 Investigator. Prof. Hogg is the leading international authority on protein disulphide bonds. He has demonstrated that disulphide bonds are neither fully formed nor inert in proteins and are remarkably dynamic bonds that control protein function. He invented small molecules that target functional disulphides which have application in cancer diagnosis and therapy. He is the founding scientist of Amplificare Pty Ltd and PENAO Pty Ltd.

Dr Martine Keenan is an experienced drug discovery and development scientist and life sciences executive with a 25-year career in the sector. Martine joined the UK arm of the multinational pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly Ltd as a synthetic and medicinal chemist and rose rapidly through the ranks to lead drug discovery programs and multidisciplinary teams. Martine moved to Australia in 2008 taking up a position at Epichem Pty Ltd, a commercial chemistry services company. She was appointed Head of Drug Discovery in 2009, and in 2018, CEO and Executive Director. Martine joined SYNthesis Research in 2021 as Chief Innovation Officer and is Chief Operating Officer for Anaxis Pharma. She is experienced in all phases of preclinical discovery from project ideation to the delivery of preclinical candidates, IP creation, project due diligence, strategic management, and commercialisation. Martine is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and recipient of the Export Councils’ WA Women in International Business Award in 2019.

Dr. Kremmidiotis is Chief Scientific Officer of Avance Clinical where he leads the Department of Scientific and Medical affairs offering Medical Writing, Drug safety monitoring and reporting and early phase clinical drug development and regulatory advice services. He has 26 years’ experience in medical research and drug development, mostly in the biotechnology industry, managing drug development programs from early discovery to completion of phase II proof of concept clinical trials and subsequent commercial drug licensing deals. Prior to joining CPR Pharma Services, Gabriel was the Vice President Research & Development at Bionomics Ltd. Gabriel has a diverse scientific background spanning the fields of Clinical Development, Drug Discovery, Cancer Biology, Molecular Genetics, Bioinformatics and Immunology.

Angela Luttick is a virologist with more than 20 years’ experience in the discovery, development and commercialisation of novel drugs. Well accustomed to leading multidisciplinary teams and experienced in the generation and integrity of key discovery-stage biological data required for the preparation of IND packages used in filing numerous FDA submissions. Angela is a co-founder and Executive Vice President, Commercial at 360biolabs and leads business development and commercialisation strategies for the company.

Dr Lorna Mitchell is VP, Drug Discovery at Certa Therapeutics and an independent consultant. She is a medicinal chemist with over 20 years of international drug discovery experience. She is an inventor on over 40 patents and has been directly involved in the delivery of 10 drug candidates to the clinic. She spent the first 10 years of her industry career at Pfizer working at sites in both the USA and the UK. Following this large Pharma experience, Dr Mitchell working in oncology focused biotechs in Boston for seven years,. She has experience across a range of therapeutic areas including oncology, CNS, dermatology, antivirals, inflammation, and inhalation.

Dr Amy Prawira is the founder and director of Obatica. She is a medical oncologist and Head of Cancer Trials and Research Unit (CTRU) at Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney. She completed a clinical fellowship at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto, Canada where she served as Chief Fellow for the Drug Development Program. Her fellowship focused on early drug development and head and neck malignancies. Until 2020, she built and led the Precision Medicine Phase I Unit at the Kinghorn Cancer Centre, St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney. She has been an investigator in over 90 early phase clinical trials and has been involved in the design and set up of a number of investigator-initiated studies. Dr Prawira has extensive experience in developing and refining clinical trial protocols, investigator’s brochure (IB), patient informed consent form (PICF), clinical study report (CSR) for a number of academic collaborators and partnering biotech and pharmaceutical companies. She currently serves as a teaching faculty member for the Asia Pacific Clinical Oncology Research Development (ACORD) workshop, scientific committee member of the Asia Pacific Oncology Drug Development Consortium (APODDC) and is also a conjoint lecturer for UNSW Sydney.

Professor Schroder heads the Inflammasome Laboratory and is Director of the Centre for Inflammation and Disease Research at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB), University of Queensland, as an NHMRC Leadership Fellow. Her research interests include the molecular mechanisms governing inflammasome activity and caspase activation, the cellular mediators of inflammasome-dependent inflammation, and mechanisms of inflammasome inhibition by cellular pathways and small molecule inhibitors. Kate is a co-inventor on patents for small molecule inhibitors of the NLRP3 inflammasome, currently under commercialisation by Inflazome Ltd. Inflazome Ltd was recently acquired by Roche in a landmark deal – one of the largest in Australian and Irish biotech history. Two of the company’s drug candidates are in clinical trials for the treatment of debilitating conditions such as cardiovascular disease, arthritis and neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and motor neuron disease.

Dr Damian Slizys is Director of Intellectual Property at Telix and Managing Director at Kobold Capital, an early stage life sciences fund manager and corporate advisory group. He is a registered patent attorney and formally served as Partner at FPA Patent Attorneys and FB Rice. He has a doctorate in Chemistry and more than 20 years’ experience working in pharma and biotech industries.

Dr Tracey Wilkinson is Director,Stakeholder Engagement Western Australia for MTPConnect. Previously she was the Commercialisation and Partnerships Manager for the Telethon Kids Institute in Perth where she was responsible for identifying, assessing, developing and commercialising opportunities with a focus on sponsored research activities and the building of large-scale engagement and strategic initiatives. During her time there she also co-founded and led the WA Digital Health Accelerator pilot program. She has a background in molecular genetics, gaining a PhD in Bioinformatics from the University of Melbourne, based at the Howard Florey & Walter and Eliza Hall Institutes. Prior to her PhD, she was also the Co-Founder of an online bioinformatics analysis service. Her business development experience was with Melbourne Ventures at the University of Melbourne, where she worked to commercialise early stage technologies and IP developed at the University.