As we move into the second phase of our partnership project with Arise Innovation Hubs at Anglia Ruskin University, we invite you to join us next month for this online event.
The importance of place and how this impacts our ecosystems and places of work is a question of increasing importance. Featuring talks by local experts and key stakeholders, this session explores the novel opportunity around Harlow and West Essex for innovation and the convergence of data and health technology. In doing so, we ask: how can we maximise the regional, national and global impact of our unique combination of location and resources?
The session will highlight several projects that are underway and planned for the town, including the Kao Data Centre which houses the NVIDIA Cambridge-1 Supercomputer, the ambitious, digitally focused redevelopment of the Princess Alexandra Hospital, and the potential relocation of the UKHSA (formerly Public Health England). The session will consider how these and other local developments make Harlow an exciting prospect and a shrewd choice for innovators and entrepreneurs working at the intersection of data and health technology.
Speaker Profiles:
Beverley Vaughan, Innovation Hubs Director, Anglia Ruskin University
Dr Beverley Vaughan joined the Arise Innovation Hubs as Director in June 2021, with over 20 years’ experience in the healthcare and life sciences sector.
Beverley trained as a clinical scientist in Haematology and worked at Cambridge and London University Hospitals. Beverley has worked in the innovation sector for the last 10 years with roles in Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst (SBC), Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult (CGT) and the University of Oxford.
Whilst at SBC Beverley supported the development of translational research facilities and raised funding from multiple pharma and biotech companies for the Open Innovation Challenge in Neurodegeneration. At CGT Beverley managed a wide portfolio of project from novel drug discovery spin outs to NHS-led delivery of cell therapy products. Most recently she was responsible for the delivery of a drug discovery consortium-UKSPINE- pivoting traditional pathways to meet the demands of healthy aging with partners, Universities of Oxford, Dundee and Birmingham, Medicines Discovery Catapult, The Francis Crick Institute and Sanger Centre Cambridge.
Since joining Arise as Director, Beverley has been working on building the life science strategy for their newest hub located on the Harlow Innovation Park, leading on strategy, fund raising and partnering activities to build a cluster of expertise within this synapse of the London-Cambridge corridor. She is also a member of the NC3Rs CRACKIT advisory panel.
Nadia Shivji-Brown, Senior Business Development Manager, UK Health Security Agency
Presentation title: Introduction to the UKHSA
Nadia is a Senior Business Development Manager at the UK Health Security Agency. She has a strong background in the life sciences and has worked both in industry and academia. Nadia has a PhD from the University of Cambridge and an MBA from the University of Warwick.
Kerry Cella, Public Health Analysis Team Lead, UK Health Security Agency
Presentation title: How the UKHSA uses data to understand the impact of Covid and other infectious disease on the healthcare system
Kerry is the Public Health Analysis Team Lead at the UK Health Security Agency within the All Hazards Intelligence directorate. With a background in crime science, Kerry has worked across a diverse range of fields in government from Crime to Education and Healthcare. Substantively a Data Scientist, Kerry leads a team of Health Analysts, Epidemiologists and Data Scientists analysing health data to understand the impact of infectious diseases on the healthcare system. Kerry is passionate about using data to tell stories that help senior decision makers understand what the current picture is around infectious disease to help them respond effectively.
Rod Faul, Senior Client Director, Kao Data
Rod Faul started his professional career as a Secondary School Teacher having gained a BEd Hons in Sports Science and Mathematics. His love of teaching, however, didn’t go hand in hand with the somewhat meagre financial rewards for such an important role! As such, Rod has been in IT/Telecoms ever since…through local access services to switchless global networking and latterly the data centre world. Kao Data has given Rod the opportunity to work more closely with the life sciences of OCP/HPC ready deployments, allowing research to thrive without being hamstrung by the inability to scale!
Chris Cook, Clinical Effectiveness, Research and Innovation Manager, The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust
Chris has worked in the Princess Alexandra Hospital Trust for 33 years. Her first role was as the Personal Assistant to the Director of Pharmacy & Sterile Services where she focused on governance and helped to set up Clinical Risk Management in the Trust in the 1990s. Chris was subsequently involved in research supported by Culyer funding, enabling researchers to take their work from the laboratories to the patient bedside.
Since 2001, Chris has developed from Research Facilitator through to Research & Development Manager before taking on her current role. Chris has grown the function from a team of just herself and two nurses to a team of nearly 20. Originally having just five studies on their portfolio to currently having 58 studies open to recruitment and many more with patients in follow up.
With a new hospital imminent, the Trust’s hopes for the future include a wholly digitalised hospital for the patients and the people.
Krishna Gandhi, Founder, Psimonix
Krishna Gandhi is the CEO of Psimonix, a neurotech R&D company that provides a non-invasive screening method for hormones and neurotransmitter levels. Their method produces nearest to real-time results, requiring just 2 minutes of EEG data. Psimonix was set up as the result of a discovery made in Krishna’s MSc dissertation project looking at EEG, neurofeedback, stress and cortisol in 2008. Since then, multiple pilot studies have been carried out to investigate the proof of concept of the EEG’s capacity to measure hormones, neurotransmitters and biomarkers.