Dr Kathryn Chapman

Executive Director, Innovate Cambridge

A molecular bioscientist, Kathryn has had a distinguished career in diverse leadership and strategic roles across the public and private sectors.

Following a successful research career at the University of Manchester, Harvard Medical School, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and GlaxoSmithKline, Kathryn has played a pivotal role in shaping inclusive innovation landscapes, building cross-disciplinary virtual and physical communities and creating novel models to remove barriers to success.

This includes a decade building and leading the innovation strategy for NC3Rs, a UKRI Research Council where Kathryn founded and directed a new challenge-led open innovation platform, CRACK IT which increases cross-discipline and cross-sector industry/academic partnerships in applied research. Kathryn also co-established the Milner Therapeutics Institute at the University of Cambridge, providing a physical hub for translational science and collaboration between industry and academia. The Institute is a centre of excellence for target validation through artificial intelligence, machine-learning, functional genomics and tool compound analyses. Most recently, prior to joining Innovate Cambridge, Kathryn directed the innovation strategy at the Babraham Research Campus, launching LiveLabs incubator space and leading the Campus accelerator, entrepreneurship and innovation activities.

Throughout these roles. Chapman’s focus has been on spearheading initiatives that propel startups, entrepreneurs and businesses towards success and driving meaningful change at a national and international level.

Kathryn has 50+ research publications and has been on a wide-range of national and international review panels (Innovate UK, Innovative Medicines Initiative and BBSRC). She holds an honorary professorship at the University of Coventry where she sits on the Vice Chancellor’s advisory group.

Professor Sir John Aston Kt FRS

Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research, University of Cambridge

Professor Sir John Aston is the Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research at the University of Cambridge and is the Harding Professor of Statistics in Public Life. John is an applied statistician with particular interest in statistical neuroimaging, official statistics and statistical linguistics. He has methodological interests in functional and object data analysis, time series and image analysis, and spatial-temporal statistics. John also leads research into the use of quantitative evidence in public policy making, works with those in public life to ensure the best methods are used, and aims to improve the use of statistics and other quantitative evidence in public policy debates. John is a non-executive board member of the UK Statistics Authority and from 2017-2020 was Chief Scientific Adviser to the Home Office and Director-General for Science, Technology, Analysis, Research and Strategy. He was a founding director of the Alan Turing Institute. He is a member of the London Policing Board and the current President of the Royal Statistical Society, where he will serve as president during 2025-26. In 2024 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of sciences and the oldest science academy in continuous existence. He is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. Prior to joining the University of Cambridge, John held academic positions at the University of Warwick and at Academia Sinica in Taiwan. John was knighted in the 2021 Birthday Honours for services to statistics and public policymaking.

Lucy Yu

CEO, Centre for Net Zero (Octopus Energy Group)

Lucy Yu is an award-winning technologist, venture builder and policymaker. She has more than twenty years’ experience building, scaling and leading venture-backed global consumer-facing and deep tech ventures in AI, mobile, energy, and mobility; and developing technology policy and regulation for the UK government, European Commission, and the UN. 

Lucy is CEO at Centre for Net Zero, Octopus Energy Group’s non-profit energy and AI open research institute spearheading the transition to a citizen-centric, fossil-free global energy system. She is the UK Government’s AI Champion for Clean Energy, a member of the AI Energy Council, and the Smart Data Council. 

Lucy holds several non-executive and advisory roles including chair of the board of trustees at Wikimedia UK, and non-executive director at E3G and Connected Places Catapult. She is a co-founder of the Institute for Ethical AI & Machine Learning, a global membership community of over 70,000 machine learning professionals. She sits on the Russell Group’s Industrial Strategy Expert Advisory Group, and she is an adviser to Form Ventures, a UK-based fund investing in start-ups building in highly regulated markets. 

She studied computational and physical chemistry at Imperial College, public leadership at Harvard Kennedy School, and venture finance at Said Business School. 

Jo Slota-Newson PhD

Managing Partner, Almanac Ventures

Jo Slota-Newson is a Deeptech venture capital investor, and Managing Partner at Almanac Ventures. Jo helps to build companies founded on scientific innovations, which will be critical to growing stronger, more resilient, decarbonised industries of the future.

Jo started her career as a research scientist in electronic materials at the University of Cambridge and the University of British Columbia. She has worked in technology commercialisation over two decades including in operational roles, such as serving as Chief Technology Officer for an early stage photovoltaics company.

Jo holds MA, MSci and PhD degrees in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge and the Chartered Financial Analyst designation, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics.

Jo is also an open water swimmer, and swam the English Channel in 2024.