The Hon. Ian Macfarlane (DipAgSc, FAICD, HonFAusIMM) is a former Australian Government Cabinet Minister and senior industry leader with extensive experience in industry, resources, energy and innovation policy. Ian served as the Member for Groom in the Australian House of Representatives from 1998 until his retirement in 2016. During his 18 years in federal parliament, Ian held multiple ministerial portfolios including Minister for Small Business; Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources; and, later, Minister for Industry and Minister for Industry and Science. In these roles, he oversaw policy frameworks that supported industry competitiveness, national innovation capacity, and sovereign industry capability, and led reforms to strengthen industry-research collaboration.

Mr Macfarlane brings extensive governance and management expertise to the AIEDD CRC, as well as deep understanding of diverse industry sectors across Australia, including pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. He is a non-executive director of Woodside Energy and a director of the Australian Composites Manufacturing CRC. He was Chief Executive of the Queensland Resources Council from 2016 until 2023, representing one of Australia’s largest export sectors. He has also served as Chair of the Innovative Manufacturing CRC, and as a member of the Board of the CSIRO. Mr Macfarlane is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and an Honorary Fellow of AusIMM Minerals Institute.

Michael Kassiou (BSc, PhD, FRACI, FAFMC, FRSC, FSRS, FTSE, FAHMS) is Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Academic Director, Centre for Drug Discovery Innovation at the University of Sydney. His research program focuses on discovering small molecules for the study and treatment of brain disorders, and he has authored more than 340 peer-reviewed publications. His innovations have resulted in several first-in-human studies and the formation of numerous spin-off companies, notably Kinoxis Therapeutics. He received numerous awards including the 2023 Eureka Prize for Leadership in Innovation and Science and the 2024 Australian Financial Review Award for Research Commercialisation.

He has been elected as a Fellow of several international professional bodies, including the Asian Federation of Medicinal Chemistry, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the Society of Radiopharmaceutical Sciences. In addition, he is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.

Fatemeh Vafaee (PhD) is a leader in AI-enabled biomedical innovation, translating advanced artificial intelligence into deployable healthcare and drug discovery solutions. She serves as Deputy Director (Science) of the UNSW AI Institute (400+ members) and leads the Biomedical AI Laboratory at UNSW, where she develops scalable AI platforms for precision medicine and therapeutics. With over 15 years in artificial intelligence (PhD in AI from the University of Illinois at Chicago), Professor Vafaee operates across the full innovation pipeline, from algorithm design and multi-omics integration to validated platforms, clinical studies, commercial diagnostics, and protected IP. Her work focuses on improving early-stage decision quality in drug discovery, where reducing failure risk delivers the greatest economic impact.

She has led 20+ collaborations across biotech, pharmaceutical, diagnostics, and clinical sectors, consistently translating AI research into real-world deployment. She is also Founding Director of OmniOmics.AI and Co-founder of OmniTx.AI, a UNSW spin-out building knowledge-graph–powered AI systems for accelerated target discovery and therapeutic development. She has published 80+ peer-reviewed papers (m-index=2, Scholar, 2026), secured over $19M in competitive and industry funding, and has been recognised internationally for leadership in AI and bioinformatics, including Top 10 Women in AI in APAC and multiple national research and industry-engagement awards.

Mary Collins (BSc, PhD, FRACI, FASCEPT) is Professor of Pharmaceutical Neuroscience and Interim Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney. She is a neuropharmacologist and medicinal chemist with more than 25 years’ experience. Her research focuses on the molecular mechanisms of ionotropic GABA and nicotinic receptors and their roles in neurological and psychiatric disorders, and she has authored more than 150 peer-reviewed publications from her work in the field.

Mary has led major translational capabilities, including the Sydney Region Combinatorial Chemistry Facility, and is an inventor on five patents relating to neurologically active compounds, alongside extensive experience building industry and cross-sector collaborations. She is a Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute and the Australasian Society of Clinical and Experimental Pharmacologists and Toxicologists.

Guillaume Lessene (MSc, PhD, FTSE) is Division Head and Associate Director Therapeutics Discovery at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI). His research focus is bridges medicinal chemistry and chemical biology to develop small-molecule probes and drug candidates that target pathways controlling whether cells live or die. He aims to modulate cell death mechanisms with therapeutic relevance across cancers and inflammatory and neurodegenerative conditions.

He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE) in 2023 and is recognised as a leader in academic small-molecule drug discovery and translation. His work contributed to the foundational collaboration with Genentech and AbbVie that led to venetoclax (ABT-199), and he has led the establishment of Australia’s National Drug Discovery Centre. He has received multiple awards including the Prime Minister Prize for Innovation (2019). He is also the co-founder of two startups (Anaxis Pharma and ExtRNA Bio).

David Ascher (PhD) is Professor in Biotechnology at The University of Queensland, an NHMRC Investigator Leadership Fellow, and Deputy Associate Dean (Research Partnerships) in UQ’s Faculty of Science. His research program develops AI- and structure-based methods to understand how genetic variation impacts protein function and clinical outcomes, and he has published 250+ peer-reviewed papers, including in Nature, Science, and PNAS.

David has pioneered widely used computational tools for variant interpretation and protein modelling, embedded in global resources such as Ensembl VEP, PDBe, and the EMBL-EBI KnowledgeBase and accessed millions of times annually worldwide. His work has informed real-world practice, including WHO policy and vaccine design collaborations with industry, and he has received major honours including the Royal Society of Chemistry Horizon Prize (2024).

Professor Wei Xiang (BEng, MEng, PhD, FIET, FIEAust) is La Trobe Distinguished Professor and Cisco Research Chair of AI and IoT at La Trobe University. His research program focuses on large-scale AI systems and digital infrastructure, spanning machine learning, computer vision, wireless communications, and secure data analytics. He has published 450+ peer-reviewed papers (including books and extensive journal publications).

Wei has founded major capability-building initiatives including the Cisco–La Trobe Centre for AI and IoT and the Australian Centre for AI and Medical Innovation (ACAMI), where he is the Director and Chief Scientist. He is an elected Fellow of the IET and Engineers Australia, with extensive international leadership across the IEEE community, and is recognised for establishing Australia’s first accredited Internet of Things Engineering degree program.

Orin Chisholm (BSc (Hons), GCULT, PhD, SFHEA, FRAPS, FMPP) is Associate Professor and the program director for the postgraduate programs in Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Development at the University of Sydney and a regulatory affairs consultant.

Orin is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK), was elected a Fellow of the Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society (USA) in 2021 and a Fellow, Medtech and Pharmaceutical Professionals (ARCS Australia) in 2025. Orin is chief investigator of the Health Innovation Observatory-Australia, an NHMRC-funded partnership grant on horizon scanning. Her research focuses on regulatory science, horizon scanning, workforce development and pharmaceutical policy.

Jeremy Crook (BSc, PhD) is Director and Arto Hardy Family Chair and Professor of Biomedical Innovation at Chris O’Brien Lifehouse and the University of Sydney, and a Professorial Fellow in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Wollongong. His research program leads point-of-care regenerative and cancer medicine, including advanced human tissue building for disease, drug and medical device modelling, adjuvant and neoadjuvant therapy, and reconstruction after cancer surgery. He previously helped develop the world’s first clinical-grade pluripotent stem cell lines through senior roles in industry and Singapore’s A*STAR, and his work has been recognised through an NIH Fogarty Fellowship (NIH Fellows Award for Research Excellence) and the inaugural Research Australia 2019 “Frontiers Research Award,” alongside international leadership roles on stem cell standards committees including the ISSCR Standards Task Force.

Andrew Harvey (PhD, MPH, GAICD) is a biotechnology executive with 25-year track record leading global drug discovery teams, delivering 7 drug candidates, 4 significant licensing deals with international pharma and 2 startups. He is currently Head of Strategic Partnerships at UniQuest and provides therapeutics and drug-discovery expertise through the Queensland Emory Drug Discovery Initiative (QEDDI), where he was the founding director. His work focuses on building high-value discovery partnerships and progressing academic innovations into industry-ready drug candidates. Previously, he was Vice President of Drug Discovery at Bionomics, and has held an NHMRC Industry Fellowship at WEHI.

Philip Kwok (BPharm (Hons), PhD) is Senior Lecturer in Pharmaceutical Sciences in the Sydney Pharmacy School at the University of Sydney, where he also serves as Research Education Academic Director. His research program focuses on pulmonary drug delivery—particularly particle engineering, physicochemical characterisation, and the electrostatics of inhaled aerosol formulations—supporting inhalation-focused collaborations across academia and industry.

Tony Papenfuss (BSc Hons, PhD) is Deputy Director at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI) and a leader in bioinformatics, computational cancer biology and AI. His team develops advanced computational methods to analyze multi-omics data and applies these to patient cohorts to drive fundamental biological and translational discoveries in cancer and other diseases. His pioneering work to apply mathematical approaches to cancer biology has been recognised with an Honorary Senior Fellow award by the Australian Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Society.

Martina Stenzel (MSc, PhD, FAA) is Scientia Professor of Chemistry at UNSW Sydney and an ARC Laureate Fellow. Her research focuses on advanced polymer and nanoparticle design, which spans RAFT-enabled complex polymer architectures, glycopolymers, and nanoscale drug-delivery systems. She was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (2018) and was recognised internationally as a recipient of the IUPAC Distinguished Women in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering Award (2021).

Jean Yang (BSc (Hons), PhD, FRSNSW) is Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sydney and Director of the Sydney Precision Data Science Centre. Her work sits at the intersection of computational statistics, machine learning and bioinformatics, developing methods for analysing complex biomedical datasets at scale. She has made foundational contributions to variance-reduction methods for microarrays and statistical approaches for high-throughput molecular data, and received the Australian Academy of Science’s Moran Medal (2015); she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales in 2025.

Wicky West (GAICD, BCom, MProfAcc) leads Business and Research Development at the University of Sydney, where she oversees strategic collaborations to secure large-scale government funding and drive impactful industry engagement. With over 15 years’ experience in the higher education sector, she has a strong track record of enabling high-value research partnerships and delivering meaningful funding outcomes.

Wicky works closely with researchers and industry partners to align research strengths with national priorities and commercial opportunities. Her efforts contribute to securing millions in funding annually and advancing the University’s reputation as a leader in research excellence, translation, and collaboration.

Bridgette Semple (BBioMedSci (Hons), PhD) is a Managing Consultant at Consulting & Implementation Services (CIS).  With over 15 years as an academic neuroscientist, Bridgette seamlessly integrates her strategic planning and project management expertise to help research and industry partners develop, fund, and implement large-scale collaborative projects, especially in health and medical research.

CIS is Australia's dominant consultancy for innovation projects, with a track record of helping clients secure nearly $1.5 billion in funding including supporting 17 of the past 20 successful CRC bids.