Main Stage Speakers

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18th June, 9:30 - 10:15

Douglas A. Comstock is the director of NASA’s innovative Partnerships Program (IPP) which provides leveraged technology for NASA’s mission directorates, programs, and projects through technology partnerships with industry, academia, government agencies and national laboratories.

He is also responsible for the IPP portfolio of technology investments and partnering mechanisms including Small Business Innovative Research and Small business Technology Transfer. 

Additionally he is responsible for intellectual property management and technology transfer that provide broad societal benefits from investment in NASA’s space and aeronautics missions and encourage partnerships with the emerging commercial space sector, including the agency’s purchase of emerging commercial services.

18th June, 10:30 - 11:00

Jonathan Kestenbaum is chief executive of NESTA, (The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts), the largest endowment in the UK exclusively dedicated to fostering innovation. With a wealth of experience both in the private and public sector, Jonathan has been an advisor to BAE systems, is a graduate of both the Cabinet Office Top Management programme and the Strategic Agility programme at Harvard Business School and a trustee of a number of foundations. In addition, he is also a board member of the Design Council and the UK’s Technology Strategy Board – to name but a few.

18th June, 11:15 - 11:55

Dr. Stephen Oesterle joined the company in 2002 as Senior Vice President for Medicine and Technology. Stephen provides executive leadership for Medtronic scientific research, formation of technological strategies and continued development of strong cooperative relationships with the world's medical communities, technical universities, financial institutions and emerging medical device companies. Previously, Stephen served as Associate Professor of Medicine at the Harvard University Medical School and as Director of Invasive Cardiology Services at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. A teacher and innovator in the field of cardiac catheterization, he has also developed and directed interventional cardiology programs at Good Samaritan Hospital, Los Angeles; at Georgetown University; and at Stanford University.

Stephen is a 1973 summa cum laude graduate of Harvard College and received his medical doctorate from Yale University in 1977. He completed his internship and residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and also served a fellowship in interventional cardiology at Stanford.

18th June, 12:10 - 12:50

Michael Astrachan has been involved in the visual arts for over 25 years and is one of the founders of XVIVO, LLC, a leader in the field of scientific animation.  As head of the creative team at XVIVO, Michael brings to animation a sophisticated knowledge of artistic naturalism, grounded in strong technique.  Michael draws upon his extensive fine arts background and leads his team to develop visually compelling animations of scientific content. Michael has vast experience across a wide range of medical and scientific disciplines, including oncology, pulmonology, dermatology, and cardiology. 

He has developed and directed mechanism of disease and mechanism of action animations for pharmaceutical clients, such as Genentech, Novartis, GSK, EMD, Serono, and Takeda, and for biotech and device companies, such as KCI, PDL Biopharma, Dendreon, Antigenics, Sirion, Medtronic, and Alexion.

Michael also has been involved in many medical educational projects, developing work for museums, broadcasters, and universities.  Among those clients are Nobel Prize winner Kerry Mullis, theoretical physicist Brian Green, and Harvard Professor of the Practice of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Rob Lue, who commissioned XVIVO to develop the ground-breaking "Inner Life of a Cell" for Biovisions. 

Recently, Michael was invited to join the task force for the "Encyclopedia of Life" Project at the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois.  He is currently working with a team of health educators, physicians, and artists to develop innovative tools for future health initiatives.

18th June, 13:05 - 13:45

Joe Almeida is President of the Medical Devices business segment at Covidien Ltd., a leading $10 billion global healthcare products company.

The business, formerly known as Tyco Healthcare, separated from parent company Tyco International on June 29, 2007. In this position, Mr. Almeida oversees the Patient Care and Safety Products, Surgical Devices, Energy-based Devices and Respiratory and Monitoring Solutions Global Business Units, as well as the Japan, Asia, Canada and Latin America regions.

These businesses account for approximately 60% of Covidien’s total revenue. Mr. Almeida joined Tyco Healthcare in 1995 as Director of Manufacturing and Corporate Engineering, and then held several positions of increasing responsibility, including Vice President of European Manufacturing and Vice President of Global Manufacturing, a position he held from 2000 to 2002. In this position, Mr. Almeida was responsible for managing 65 worldwide manufacturing sites in 15 countries, $4.0 billion in annual costs of goods sold and 23,000 employees.

Mr. Almeida left Tyco Healthcare in 2003 for Greatbatch Technologies, Inc., a leading manufacturer of power sources and components for implantable medical devices, before returning to Tyco Healthcare in 2004 as President of the International Business Unit. He was appointed to his current position in October 2006.

Before joining Tyco Healthcare, Mr. Almeida was a Director of Manufacturing in Acufex Microsurgical’s American Home Products division, an Engineering Manager of Johnson & Johnson’s Professional Products division and a Management Consultant at Anderson Consulting (Accenture).

Mr. Almeida received a Bachelor’s degree from the Instituto Mauá de Tecnologia in São Paulo, Brazil.

18th June, 14:00 - 14:45

Louis J. Burns is vice-president and general manager of Digital Health Group, Intel Corporation and is responsible for leading Intel Corporation’s initiative to help transform global health by developing innovative technologies that connect people and information.

Prior to this, Burns was general manager of the Desktop Platform Group (DPG) responsible for the design, development and market development of Intel’s desktop platform solutions, which have set the benchmark for today’s technologies.

In a world where technology now plays an increasing part in delivering improved healthcare to patients, the Intel Corporation is at the forefront of developing innovative solutions that will drive the healthcare technologies of tomorrow.

18th June, 15:00 -15:45

Professor Lord Darzi of Denham is Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Health.  In 4 July 2007, the Prime Minister and Health Secretary announced that Lord Darzi would lead a review of the NHS that would advise on how to meet the challenges of delivering health care over the next decade.

Lord Darzi also holds the Paul Hamlyn Chair of Surgery at Imperial College London and is an honorary consultant at St Mary's Hospital and The Royal Marsden.

Lord Darzi and his team are respected internationally for their innovative work in the advancement of minimal invasive surgery, and in the development and use of allied technologies including surgical robots and image guided surgery. Lord Darzi actively pursues, and relentlessly campaigns for, the need for improved inter-disciplinary research. 
 
The innovative work of Lord Darzi and his team is globally recognised. They have been awarded many prizes including the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Excellence in Higher and Further Education in 2001. The prize was given in recognition for pioneering new technologies to address training requirements for trainee surgeons, surgeons in post and other professionals.
 
Lord Darzi was knighted by the Queen as a Knight Commander of the most excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE) in December 2002 for his service to medicine and surgery.

18th June, 17:00 -17:45

Professor Martin Birchall is professor of Laryngology at the Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear hospital and holds a host of other posts and honours too numerous to mention. His special interest though is in Head and Neck Surgery and Laryngology.

He leads the largest ENT research group in the UK, focused on developing newer and better treatments for throat diseases. A leading innovator in his field he has dedicated his career to finding solutions to the problems faced by people with throat diseases and his work on transplantation, immunology and nerve repair culminated in a pan-European project to tissue-engineer a new windpipe for a Columbian woman, which was much publicised world-wide.

18th June, 17:00 -17:45

Professor Paolo Macchiarini is, amongst other things, head and chairman of the Hospital Clinic de Barcelona and professor of surgery at the University of Barcelona and the Hannover Medical School in Germany.

He has worked closely with Professor Birchall in the field of ENT research and his interests include extended surgery for lung, esophageal and mediastinal tumours; lung  and heart-lung transplantation; pulmonary endarterectomy; (bio) artifical lung and experimental research, education and training.  Together with his colleague Professor Birchall he has dedicated his career to finding innovative solutions to the problems faced by those with throat diseases of all kinds.

19th June, 9:30 -10:00

In 1993, Lord Drayson of Kensington co-founded the vaccine company PowderJect Pharmaceuticals plc in Oxford and was Chairman and Chief Executive until 2003. 

He floated PowderJect on the London Stock Exchange in 1997. Over ten years he built PowderJect into one of the world’s leading vaccine companies with operations in the UK, USA and Scandinavia, until selling it for £540 million in 2003.

Between 2001 and 2002, Lord Drayson was the Chairman of the BioIndustry Association and was active in the industry’s campaign to tackle animal rights extremism. He was Chairman of the Oxford Children’s Hospital Fundraising Campaign from 2002-2005.  The new Children’s Hospital at the John Radcliffe in Oxford opened in early 2007.

From 2003 to 2005, he was Science Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Said Business School at Oxford University, involved in the teaching of entrepreneurship to MBA students. In June 2007, Lord Drayson became a member of the Prime Minister’s Business Council.  Lord Drayson was raised to the peerage as Baron Drayson, of Kensington in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in May 2004. In May 2005, he was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State and Minister for Defence Procurement and became a Government Spokesman for Defence to the House of Lords.

In March 2007, he was promoted to become Minister for Defence Equipment and Support, serving until November 2007. Lord Drayson was also appointed as Minister of State for Business and Regulatory Reform at the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, serving between June 2007 and January 2008.

In November 2007, he took a leave of absence from the Government to compete in the American Le Mans Series in the United States. In October 2008, he returned to Government and was appointed as the Minister of State for Science and Innovation, taking up a seat in the Cabinet and becoming a member of the Privy Council in November of that year.

19th June, 10:15 -10:55

Martha Lane Fox recently agreed to be chairman of Digital Inclusion working with an expert task force whose aim is to get better education, employment, health, governmental and social opportunities for the most socially excluded in the UK through online technology.

In the late 1990's Martha built lastminute.com into the leading travel and leisure website in Europe.  By 2001 she employed over 2000 employees and ran operations in 12 countries and at 26 Martha became known as one of the first business entrepreneurs to embrace the idea of an online future. Martha and co-founder Brent Hoberman floated the company in 2001and sold it in 2005 to Sabre Holdings.

In 2004 Martha suffered a car accident after which she was hospitalized for nearly two years and needed to undergo intensive physiotherapy in order to relearn to walk.  Her experiences in her two years in hospital prompted her to wish to champion excellence in personal care in the NHS.

Martha currently runs Lucky Voice, which aims to bring the pleasures of singing to people across the UK through bars and the web. She is a Non-Executive Director of Marks and Spencer, making her the youngest female non executive of a FTSE 100 company and also of Channel 4.  She is on the board of mydeco.com, an innovative new e commerce furniture site founded by Brent Hoberman and is a trustee of Reprieve, a legal action charity.

Martha set up Antigone in 2007, a grant giving foundation that gives small grants to start up or early stage charities in healthcare, education and criminal justice.

19th June, 11:10 -11:50

Sir Gus O'Donnell is Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service, he took over as Cabinet Secretary on 1 August 2005. Prior to that, he was Permanent Secretary to HM Treasury (July 2002 – July 2005).

Before that he had been Managing Director, Macroeconomic Policy and International Finance since 1999. From 1998–9 he was Director of Macroeconomic Policy and Prospects, and from 1997–98 was the UK's Executive Director to the IMF and World Bank. He has also been Head of the Government Economics Service, the UK's largest employer of professional economists, since 1998.

Gus O'Donnell studied economics at the University of Warwick and Nuffield College Oxford. He joined the Treasury as an economist in 1979, having spent four years as an economics lecturer at the University of Glasgow. Subsequent posts in Government included Press Secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1989–90) and Press Secretary to the Prime Minister (1990–94).

19th June, 12:05 -12:45

Ben Page is Managing Director of IPSOS MORI Public Affairs and chairman of its Social Research Institute. Since 1992, he has worked closely with both Conservative and Labour ministers as well as senior policy makers across central and local government, the Department of Health, local authorities and NHS Trusts.

Named one of  ‘the most 100 influential people in the public sector’ and  ‘one of the most 50 influential people in local government’ he is naturally one of the most sought after speakers on leadership and performance management, has won numerous awards, and serves on a wide range of commissions and reviews.

19th June, 13:00 -13:45

David Nicholson was appointed Chief Executive of the English National Health Service in September 2006.

In 1988, Nicholson was appointed as the Chief Executive of the Doncaster Healthcare NHS Trust, a first-wave NHS trust. He introduced Clinical Directorates there in 1988 and the Trust was a national pilot for Total Quality Management. In 1997, he moved to the Trent NHS Regional Office as the Regional Director of Performance before being appointed as Regional Director in November 2000. Nicholson was then made Regional Director for the old Eastern and West Midlands Regions between December 2001 and March 2002, combining these responsibilities with his Trent role whilst shadowing as Director of Health and Social Care (designate) for the Midlands and East of England. In April 2002 he formally took up the post of Director of Health and Social Care for the Midlands and East of England and had responsibility for 8 Strategic Health Authorities covering 20 million in population.

In 2003 he was appointed Chief Executive of Birmingham and The Black Country Strategic Health Authority (BBC SHA). In August 2005 he was asked to take on the additional roles of Chief Executive of neighbouring Shropshire and Staffordshire SHA and West Midlands South SHA. In April 2006 he was appointed Chief Executive of the newly formed London Strategic Health Authority. However he had little opportunity to make his mark, as it was announced on 27 July 2006 that he would be taking up the role of NHS Chief Executive in September 2006 in charge of a £90bn budget and 1.3m employees. This became his fifth job-change in a year. Nicholson was awarded a CBE in the 2004 New Years Honours list, and received the honorary award of Doctor of the University from the University of Central England, Birmingham.

19th June, 14:00-14:45

David Kester was appointed Chief Executive of the Design Council in May 2003. He has refocused the organisation as the national strategic body for design, leading central government policies and regional programmes that strengthen competitiveness, drive innovation and support growth in the creative economy.

Prior to the Design Council, David has held senior leadership roles within business, design and the environmental sector including nine years as Chief Executive of D&AD and four years at the pressure group Friends of the Earth. His tenure at the design and advertising organisation, D&AD, is associated with a turnaround in performance and reputation, including internationalising its award scheme and building its education programmes.

He is a council member of the Royal College of Art and The Royal Society of Arts, a trustee of the Kingston Rose Theatre, board member of the Design Business Association and regular commentator and advisor to government on the creative economy, enterprise and innovation.

19th June, 15.00-15.45

Andrew Witty was named CEO designate for GSK in October 2007 and assumed the position of Chief Executive Officer on 21 May 2008. He is a member of the Board and Corporate Executive Team and previously held the role of President, Pharmaceuticals Europe, for five years.

Andrew joined Glaxo in 1985 and held a variety of roles in the UK business. He was a Sales Representative for the Respiratory business, held a variety of Marketing roles and was Director of Pharmacy and Distribution.

He has worked in the Company’s International New Products groups, both in the Respiratory and HIV/Infectious disease fields and has been involved in multiple new product development programmes.

In 1993, Andrew was appointed Managing Director of Glaxo South Africa and later Area Director for GlaxoWellcome, South and East Africa. Subsequently he moved to North Carolina as Vice President and General Manager, Marketing for GlaxoWellcome Inc., the group’s US subsidiary.

Andrew then moved to Singapore and led the Group’s operations in Asia as Senior Vice President, Asia Pacific prior to his appointment to the Corporate Executive Team as President of GSK Europe in 2003.

While in Singapore Andrew was a Board Member of the Singapore Economic Development Board, the Singapore Land Authority and in 2003 was awarded the Public Service Medal by the Government of Singapore.

Andrew has served in numerous advisory roles to Governments around the world including South Africa, Singapore, Guangzhou China and the UK.

Andrew is currently a Non-Executive Director of the UK’s Office for Strategic Co-ordination of Health Research, sits on the Imperial College Commercialisation Advisory Board, is a member of the Health Innovation Council and is a member of INSEAD UK Council.

He is also a member of the Business Council for Britain, a Board Member of PhRMA, a Vice-President of EFPIA and a Member of the Singapore Economic Development Board's International Advisory Council.

Andrew has a Joint Honours BA in Economics from the University of Nottingham.

19th June, 16.00–16.30

Lord Davies of Abersoch became Minister for Trade, Investment and Business following the creation of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) on 5 June 2009, a role he holds jointly between BIS and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

He was previously appointed as joint Minister of State for the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform (BERR) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on 14 January 2009.

Prior to this appointment, he was Chairman of Standard Chartered PLC since November 2006. He joined the Board of Standard Chartered PLC in December 1997 and was Group Chief Executive from November 2001 until 2006. He was a non-executive director at Tesco PLC from 2003-2008.

Lord Davies is the Chair of the Council of the University of Wales, Bangor and a trustee of the Royal Academy of Arts.

He was awarded a CBE for his services to the financial sector and the community in Hong Kong in June 2002.

Lord Davies is married with two children and is a fluent Welsh speaker. He is a keen sportsman and is interested in Welsh art, music and reading. He was born in 1952.

19th June, 16.45–18.00

Clayton M. Christensen is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, with a joint appointment in the Technology & Operations Management and General Management faculty groups. His research and teaching interests center on the management issues related to the development and commercialization of technological and business model innovation. Specific areas of focus include developing organizational capabilities and finding new markets for new technologies.

His seminal book The Innovator’s Dilemma (1997), which first outlined his disruptive innovation frameworks, received the Global Business Book Award for the Best Business Book of the Year in 1997, was a New York Times bestseller, has been translated into over 10 languages, and is sold in over 25 countries. He is also a multiple-time recipient of the McKinsey Award for the Harvard Business Reviews’ best article. In two books he recently co-authored (Disrupting Class and The Innovator’s Prescription) Christensen focused his research on two of the most vexing social issues facing our country today.