Speakers

Chas is Pro-Vice Chancellor for Innovation at the University of Oxford, Professor of Translational Medicine in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, Director of the Centre for Medicines Discovery, and Professorial Fellow at Keble College, Oxford. Prior to coming back to Oxford in 2008, Chas was Vice President and Head of Biology at GlaxoSmithKline. Chas is an invited expert on several government and charitable research funding bodies, and an advisor for many academic, biotech and pharma drug discovery programmes. In 2012 he was voted one of the “top innovators in the industry”, in 2014 received the “Rita and John Cornforth Award” from the Royal Society of Chemistry, in 2017 and 2018 was voted “Master of the Bench” from the Medicine Maker Power List, and in 2018 was awarded the “Order of the British Empire” in the New Years Honours List.

Professor Hanan H. Balkhy is the first appointed Assistant Director-General for the Antimicrobial Resistance Division (AMR) at the World Health Organization (WHO), which is a flagship program for the World Health Organization with a mandate to lead the human health response to the emergence of antimicrobial resistance along with the relevant stakeholders. Dr Balkhy is a Professor of Paediatric Infection Diseases with over two decades of experience in the field of infectious diseases and Infection Prevention and Control (IPC), and as a clinician and a researcher. She has also led a WHO Collaborating Centre for IPC and AMR, established the Infectious Disease Research Unit at King Abdullah International Medical Research Centre and was the Editor-in-Chief of 5he Journal of Infection and Public Health for 10 years.

Janet Midega is a Senior Research Manager for Wellcome’s Drug Resistant Infections (DRI) programme where she is providing scientific leadership, program development and management support to the surveillance and epidemiology program on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR). At Wellcome, she led the recently published work on the burden of AMR and continues to lead science and policy research which aims at evaluating how legislative changes banning antibiotic use in animal meat production can reduce the potential transfer of resistant pathogens between animals and humans; and a surveillance program on the development of a comprehensive data capture system for patient-centred AMR surveillance in low- and middle-income countries. In line with the DRI programmes interest in accelerating the development of new antibiotics, Janet worked closely with CARB-x based at Boston University, USA in 2018/19, as part of Wellcome’s role as an accelerator and support for companies joining CARBx. Prior to joining Wellcome, Janet was a scientist at Imperial College and the University of Oxford, Big Data Institute; in collaboration with the KEMRI- Wellcome Trust Research Programme where she worked for over 15 years conducting academic research on the genomic epidemiology of malaria. Janet is also a Senior Fellow in Public Health at the Aspen Institute, Washington DC, USA.

Arlene is a Fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society with over 25 years’ experience in pharmacy postgraduate education. As Assistant Director of NHS Education for Scotland (Pharmacy), she served as Education Lead within the Scottish Antimicrobial Prescribing Group. Arlene now works for Antibiotic Research UK, a charity fighting antibiotic resistance. In 2019 she set up and now leads the award-winning Patient Support Programme. Arlene provides information and support to patients throughout the UK suffering with resistant infection and is often invited to share that patient experience with policymakers, researchers and clinicians. Arlene is also Trustee of a Lyme disease charity.

Dr Catriona Waddington is chair of the Expert Advisory Group which advises on the work of the management agent for the Fleming Fund, Mott MacDonald. She is a health economist who has worked extensively with Ministries of Health in a number of countries, including Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi and Tonga. Areas of professional focus include practical advice on prioritisation, the effects of out-of-pocket payments, and aid effectiveness (how donors can effectively work together and with governments in a country). She has been closely involved with the development of a costs-and-effects framework for AMR surveillance in low- and middle-income countries.

Dr Laurence Roope is a Senior Researcher at the University of Oxford’s Health Economics Research Centre (HERC). His research lies broadly within health economics and development economics. He is especially interested in the economics of poverty and inequality, and in applying economic principles to tackle global challenges such as antimicrobial resistance, pandemics and climate change. His academic work has been published in a variety of prestigious economics and general interest scientific journals, including Science, Nature Medicine and PNAS. His research has also featured in multiple United Nations policy documents and he is regularly quoted in the media.

Professor Charles Godfray was appointed Director of the Oxford Martin School on 1 February 2018. He is a population biologist with broad interests in the environmental sciences and has published in fundamental and applied areas of ecology, evolution and epidemiology. He is interested in how the global food system will need to change and adapt to the challenges facing humanity in the 21st century, and in particular in the concept of sustainable intensification, and the relationship between food production, ecosystem services and biodiversity. In 2017 he was knighted for services to scientific research and for scientific advice to government.