Welcome to our two-day online conference letting you know about the science behind the COVID-19 pandemic and how disruptive thinkers stepped up to fight back. Hear from the researchers and companies at the forefront of the COVID response tell you about their work and what our ‘new normal’ looks like.


Graham Cooke is an NIHR Research Professor of Infectious Diseases based within the Department of Infectious Disease at Imperial College. Dr. Cooke’s current work is focused on stratified/precision medicine in infection, particularly HIV and viral hepatitis.

Norbert’s main scientific activities are in the area of electromagnetic material characterization and sensor applications, but also on microwave and terahertz devices for communication and sensing. One current focus is on graphene and related 2D materials. The other focus is on microwave-to-terahertz biosensing, in particular, blood analysis by microfluidic-resonator assemblies and single-cell detection in biological liquids

Norbert’s main scientific activities are in the area of electromagnetic material characterization and sensor applications, but also on microwave and terahertz devices for communication and sensing. One current focus is on graphene and related 2D materials. The other focus is on microwave-to-terahertz biosensing, in particular, blood analysis by microfluidic-resonator assemblies and single-cell detection in biological liquids

Olly Oechsle
As senior engineering manager at Benevolent AI for almost 5 years now, Olly creates natural language processing software to extract information from scientific literature in order to discover new medicines. In his position he also played a pivotal role in the Benevolent AI, COVID-19 response

Sumit Popli
As a partner at McKinsey & Company sumit brings deep expertise in banking and insurance, supporting financial institutions across Southeast Asia and India to transform operations and define and design new business models and expansion strategies

Dr. Anna Blakney is part of Professor Robin Shattock’s group who has developed a prototype vaccine for COVID-19. The team took a record 14 days to get from the genetic sequencing of the virus to generate the trial vaccine in the lab. The prototype vaccine is currently being trailed in animal models.

In 2003, Simon founded MEDICA which he built up to be the UK’s No 1 teleradiology provider, a company now listed on the LSE. Simon sold MEDICA to the largest charity in the UK, Nuffield Health in February 2013. A pioneer in outsourcing services in Radiology, Simon grew MEDICA into a national teleradiology reporting company.
Now leading behold.ai, with the goal of utilizing AI to lead the way in tackling the issues facing Radiology internationally, starting in the UK and USA.
Check out some exciting start-up companies to see what’s going on right now in the MedTech world!