Neil Weir is responsible for global research at UCB. He has been with UCB and Celltech for the past 16 years during which time he has been involved in the discovery and development of antibody and antibody fragment-based drugs along with the development of supporting technologies. He is now focused on Research Portfolio Management and Research Strategy. Prior to joining Celltech Neil, worked in Academic Research on the regulation of amino acid biosynthesis at the University of Kent at Canterbury. Neil is in the Research Director Group of the EFPIA (The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations) and is also a steering group member of the Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre. Neil is also a member of the Translational Medicines Board, established after the Cooksey Review in 2006. He has a BSc (Hons) in biology from Edinburgh University and studied for his PhD at the Institute of Biotechnology (University of Kent at Canterbury) in metabolic flux through amino acid biosynthesis pathways.

Andrew is a Senior Director in the Strategic Management Group at Pfizer Global Research and Development in New London, Connecticut, where his work is focused on approaches to enhance innovation and efficiency across Research and Development. He has 12 years management experience with Pfizer leading large multi-disciplinary departments in Drug Discovery and prior to that was researcher for over 12 years at Cornell Medical College, the American Cyanamid Company and Wyeth. Andrew earned his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Essex in the UK and did his postdoctoral research in the USA at Cornell University Medical College -New York Hospital with Professor Alton Meister.

Indications discovery unit

Dr Nicola Richmond is currently a principal scientist in the Computational and Structural Chemistry group at GlaxoSmithKline, a post she has held for over four years. Prior to joining GSK, Dr Richmond was the Tripos Research Associate in Peter Willett's group, at the University of Sheffield, where she developed a novel, now commercialised methodology for the automated alignment of molecules in 3D. She joined Sheffield having spent nearly two years with the Statistics and Modelling group at Unilever R&D, initially based in Port Sunlight then latterly at the Centre for Nanoscale Science, University of Liverpool. Her career path has been somewhat unconventional as she is educated to PhD level in pure mathematics and to MSc level in computer science.