Alessandro Adelfio has a background in Computer Science with focus on Artificial Intelligence. After his Master's degree he has worked as machine learning engineer and software developer on different projects in the field of Ambient Intelligence. He moved from Italy to Ireland where he got a PhD in Bioinformatics with a thesis on machine learning and predictive models for protein structure and function. He was one of the early employees in Nuritas and has been instrumental in the development of the deep learning models for prediction of peptide bioactivities and properties. He has also been a key member in the development of the Nuritas software platform designed to follow the life-cycle of peptides from in-silico prediction to the market.

David H. Freedman is a science journalist covering health and technology. He’s a frequent cover-story contributor to Newsweek, a contributing writer for The Atlantic, and a long-time contributor to Scientific American. He has also at times been a frequent contributor to The New York Times, Forbes, Technology Review, Science, and Discover, and founded and edited a website covering the global healthcare industry. He is the author of five books, the most recent being “Wrong,” about the failure of expertise.

Arthur Hiller is a Boston-based biopharma executive and currently Chief Business Officer at Nuritas (http://www.nuritas.com), a global leader in applying artificial intelligence to discover and synthesize new drugs based on naturally-occurring bioactive peptides. His career spans more than 35 years of experience across a wide range of functional areas and sectors of the life sciences and healthcare technology industry, including senior leadership roles in setting strategy, building Commercial Operations, launching products, new product development, sales management, and corporate development. Over the last decade, he has been CEO of two early stage companies in the areas of drug discovery and cardiovascular medical devices, and Chief Business Officer of an emerging digital health technology company. Earlier in his career, he held executive positions in general management, marketing, sales, sales management, and business development at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Merck and Co, and two other large, multinational pharmaceutical companies. He also served as Senior Vice President, Business Development for Merck-Medco Managed Care, where he focused his efforts on the conceptualization and execution of numerous alliances with pharmaceutical manufacturers to support and expand Merck-Medco disease management programs. Arthur holds a Bachelor’s Degree in journalism from Northwestern University and a Master’s Degree in Business Policy from Columbia University, serves in Advisory Board and mentoring capacities for a wide range of start-up and early stage companies in the Boston area.

Dr. Penuela's lab is interested in the study of a novel family of channel-forming proteins, called Pannexins (Panx1, Panx2 and Panx3) that were discovered in the last decade based on their similarity to the invertebrate innexins. Although they were originally thought to be another family of gap junction proteins, we have established that their primary function is to form single membrane channels for release and uptake of ions and large molecules, such as ATP, involved in paracrine signaling. Pannexins are very important for cellular communication and are involved in early developmental events in many systems, including skin, cartilage, bone, vasculature and central nervous system, where they regulate proliferation and differentiation of different cell types. However, when expressed in adult tissues, pannexins can also have detrimental effects, for instance, facilitating cell death under ischemic conditions and malignant transformation in melanomas.

Dr. Ved Srivastava is Vice President of Chemistry at Intarcia Therapeutics and President of the American Peptide Society. Prior to Intarcia, he was co-founder and Vice President of peptide chemistry of Phoundry Pharmaceuticals. Phoundry was acquired by Intarcia Therapeutics in 2015. Prior to that, he was the Head of Peptide Chemistry at GlaxoSmithKline (USA), and in the senior leadership role at Amylin Pharmaceuticals. Ved has over 25 years of expertise in peptide medicinal chemistry, peptide drug delivery and chemistry manufacturing and control (CMC) with major emphasis in drug discovery and development in metabolic diseases, CNS, and inflammation therapeutic area. He has significantly contributed to the development of three peptide-based drugs ByettaTM, SymlinTM , and BydeureonTM for the treatment of diabetes. Ved has co-authored and published more than sixty peer-reviewed manuscripts, patents, and abstracts, and is editor of four recent books focused on peptide discovery and development - (1) Peptide Therapeutics CMC - Strategy for Chemistry Manufacturing and Control (2) Peptide-based Drug Discovery: Challenges and New Therapeutics, (3) Comprehensive Medicinal Chemistry III - Biologics Medicine -Vol 6 and (4) ‘Peptide 2015’. Ved is vice-chair and member of the Peptides Expert Committee (BIO1) of the United States Pharmacopeia and serves in the governance of the FASEB, American Chemical Society (ACS), and American Peptide Society. Ved earned a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Lucknow, India.

Karen established Deloitte UK’s Centre for Health Solutions in November 2011. The Centre is the independent research arm of Deloitte’s Life Sciences and Health Care (LSHC) practices. Its aim is to be a trusted source of relevant, timely and reliable insights on emerging trends, challenges and solutions. The Centre combines creative thinking, robust research and industry experience to develop evidence-based perspectives on some of the biggest and most challenging issues to help our clients to transform themselves and, importantly, benefit the patient. Recent life sciences research reports include Ten years on: Measuring the return from pharmaceutical innovation 2019; and our series of reports on how AI is transforming the biopharma value chain (Intelligent drug discovery - Powered by AI, Intelligent clinical trials - Transforming through AI enablement and Intelligent drug supply chain- Creating value from AI. Recent healthcare focused reports include: Closing the digital gap: Shaping the future of UK healthcare, Realising digital first primary care with the third report in the series on digital transformation of healthcare, focussed on seven European countries, published on 10 September. Karen is a member of the Institute of Chartered Public Finance and Accountants and has extensive experience in leading research into healthcare and life-science issues in the UK and internationally. In 2002, Karen received an OBE for her work on Health Value for Money Audit work. For past eight years Karen has been a Non-Executive Director at Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust where she chairs the Audit Committee.