Picture credit: Wikimedia commons and National Cancer Institute.
Gates Cambridge Scholars and Alumni are taking part in a panel discussion on global health and vaccines at this year's online Hay Festival.
Four Gates Cambridge Scholars and Alumni will take part in a panel on vaccination and the future of global health at this year’s Hay Festival next week.
Emma Glennon, Samir Ali Khan, Julia Fan Li and Dan Storisteanu will speak at the online event on 27th May which will be chaired by Dan Davis, Professor of Immunology at the University of Manchester and author of The Beautiful Cure.
Emma Glennon [2016], who is doing a PhD in Veterinary Science, will speak about her work as an infectious disease epidemiologist, examining why new diseases emerge. Emma’s research lies at the intersections of ecology, data science and the social and economic determinants of disease and she has worked on epidemiological research and outbreak response around the world, including in the UK, India, Australia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In her talk, she will focus on how technology in an unequal world can counteract or contribute to the spread of disease.
Samir Ali Khan [2007] did his PhD in Pharmacology. Samir is co-founder of Lighthouse Innovations, an Oxford-based innovation and access strategy house advising health start-ups and entrepreneurs on market access, pricing and payer value strategy within and beyond the NHS in the UK. He has previously advised top 10 FTSE global life sciences and healthcare companies and more than 50 start-ups on market access strategy for drugs, vaccines, diagnostics and AI. Samir is also a co-inventor of a vaccine candidate for Hepatitis E in India and drug targets in neurological and cardiovascular diseases in the UK. He will talk about the challenges in innovation and the role of collaboration in accelerating vaccine development. He will also discuss the role of pricing innovation in the future impact of and equitable access to vaccines.
Dan Storisteanu [2012] did his PhD in Medicine. A Research Fellow at Darwin College and Visiting Scholar at the Laboratory of Viral Zoonotics, he is co-founder of Simprints, a leading biometric identification start-up, where he focuses on research, testing and deployment of a biometric system for global health applications. He also works with another Cambridge start-up, DIOSynVax, where he supports efforts to develop Ebola, influenza and COVID vaccines. He will talk about his work in COVID-19 vaccine development and also about Simprints’ role in last mile vaccine distribution.
Julia Fan Li [2009] did her PhD in Engineering and is CEO of Micrographia Bio, a biotechnology company operating at the intersection of machine learning and drug discovery. A Gates Cambridge Trustee, Julia was previously Director of the Global Health Investment Fund – a social impact investment fund designed to provide financing to advance the development of drugs, vaccines, diagnostics and other interventions against diseases that disproportionately burden low-income countries. She will talk about what we can learn from historic business models which aim to provide treatments and vaccines more equitably across the world and about what we can do to prevent future pandemics, for example, greater investment in databases, manufacturing capacity and research.
*To register for the free event which runs from 11.30am to 12.30pm on 27th May, click here.
Emma Glennon
- Alumni
- United States
- 2016 PhD Veterinary Medicine
- Churchill College
Samir Khan
- Alumni
- India
- 2007 PhD Pharmacology
- Darwin College
Samir is a Health innovation and Market Access professional with more than seven years of experience in the commercialisation and market access of futuristic technologies spanning Genomics and AI-led Discovery, Diagnostics, Digital patient wellness and healthcare system transformation.
Samir is the co-founder of Lighthouse Innovations Ltd – an Oxford-based innovation and access strategy house advising start-ups and entrepreneurs within and beyond the NHS-industry ecosystem of the UK.
Samir has advised top 10 FTSE Global Life Sciences and Healthcare Commercial Leads and >50 growing start-ups on international market access, payer engagement on value-based pricing and risk-sharing agreements. His experiences span oncology, rare diseases, mental health, and chronic inflammatory indications.
Samir received the Bill and Melinda Gates Fellowship Award to complete his PhD in Pharmacology at Cambridge University. Samir has co-authored papers in Nature and is co-inventor of a vaccine for Hepatitis E in India and drug targets in neurological and cardio-vascular diseases in the UK.
Daniel Storisteanu
- Alumni
- Canada
- 2012 PhD Medicine
- Clare Hall
With a background in environmental biology and after a number of stints in tiger, bat, and marine conservation research with universities and NGOs like the WWF, I’ve changed scope and species and am now starting a PhD in Medical Science. I intend to investigate a novel strategy that certain pathogens may use to manipulate the immune system. Our lab has recently discovered that a disease-causing virus exploits the signals released by our immune cells, causing other cells to be more permissive to viral infection and weaken the immune system’s anti-viral strategies. My research will investigate the mechanisms this virus uses to take advantage of the immune system, and investigate whether they are used by pathogens such as tuberculosis and influenza. The long-term aim of this research is to identify points in the immune system where we may be able to intervene with therapies to treat and prevent these diseases, and to help identify individuals at higher risk of complications.
Julia Li
- Alumni, Trustees
- Canada
- 2008 MPhil Bioscience Enterprise
2009 PhD Engineering - St John's College
Julia completed a PhD Engineering in 2012, which focused on innovative financing solutions for global health. Stemming from her PhD research at Gates Cambridge, she originated, raised and deployed the world's first $108mm Global Health Investment Fund with Lion's Head Global Partners and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The purpose of the fund was to provide financing to advance the development of drugs, vaccines, diagnostics and other interventions against diseases that disproportionately burden low-income countries. Before coming to Cambridge, Julia qualified as a Chartered Accountant with KPMG's Canadian biotechnology practice and undertook projects for a variety of organisations including GAVI and WHO. During her time in Cambridge, Julia co-founded the African Innovation Prize, served on the University Council, and initiated and convened the Cambridge Global Health Commercialization and Funding Roundtable. Julia is currently based in London's White City biomedical campus as Co-Founder & CEO of Micrographia Bio, a deeptech bio company focused on applying machine learning to bioimaging to accelerate drug discovery.
