About the Advisory Committee

The Innogen Centre Advisory Committee provides the Director with advice on the centre's research programme and strategy.

Professor Grahame Bulfield, CBE

Grahame Bulfield is a Senior Honorary Professorial Fellow and Emeritus Professor of Genetics at the University of Edinburgh where he was formerly Vice-Principal and Head, College of Science and Engineering.  He was previously Director and Chief Executive of the Roslin Institute (Edinburgh) and has held university posts at Leicester and UC Berkeley.  He completed his doctoral studies in Genetics and Biochemistry at the University of Edinburgh and his undergraduate degree at Leeds.

He has served on a wide range of UK Government and Research Council Committees and Working Parties and has been a non-executive Director of nine companies and an advisor and consultant to both a US and UK biotechnology venture capital fund as well as a UK biotech company.

Professor Bulfield has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of Edinburgh and Abertay.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, of the Institute of Biology and of the Royal Society of Arts, and is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Agricultural Society of England.  He was awarded a CBE for services to Animal Genetics in 2001.

Alastair Kent
Director, Genetic Alliance UK

Alastair has been a Non Executive Director on the PCT Board since its inception in April 2002. He is Director of the Genetic Alliance UK, the national alliance of charities and support groups for families with inherited disorders. He has championed the PCT's approach to patient and public involvement, helping to ensure that local residents have the opportunity to both contribute to their own health care and shape local health service developments. He holds two other ministerial appointments being a member of the Human Genetics Commission, and a local Magistrate. His term of office will run to 31 March 2008

Ann Millar
Assistant Director, Research Policy and Strategy, Scottish Funding Council

Ann has worked as Assistant Director at the Scottish Funding Council for Further and Higher Education (SFC) since 2004. Firstly working in the Research Policy and Strategy Directorate and more recently in the Strategic Development Group, Ann leads the team responsible for developing the Council’s knowledge exchange agenda to enhance Scottish universities and colleges’ activities to engage with business, public sector and wider community.  Ann joined SFC from the Scottish Government where she worked as a government social researcher in a wide range of policy contexts and latterly held the post of Deputy Chief Researcher.  Ann is an academician of the Academy of Social Sciences and was a member of the ESRC’s Strategic Research Board from 2004-08.

Dr Eleanor Mitchell
Intellectual Asset Commercialisation Director, Scottish Enterprise

Eleanor has extensive experience in strategic, support and operational roles developed at a number of life science companies. A graduate in Developmental Biology from University of Aberdeen followed by an MSc and PhD in Chemical Information Science at Sheffield University.  Eleanor joined Scottish Enterprise in October 2009 following the integration of ITI Scotland with Scottish Enterprise.  Eleanor joined ITI Scotland from Millennium Pharmaceuticals R&D Ltd in Cambridge UK. There, she had responsibility for the growth of the business support functions and the development of the research facilities to provide operational efficiency while the company doubled in size and delivered on its oncology research programmes. Before this she worked as Head of Research Operations at the contract drug discovery provider Cambridge Discovery Chemistry/Combinatorial and spent 11 years in customer support and marketing at 3 life science software companies - Oxford Molecular, Biosym Technologies and the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre in Europe and the USA.

Chris Warkup
Director, Biosciences Knowledge Transfer Network, Technology Strategy Board

Chris is from a farming background in East Yorkshire and holds a degree in Animal Science.  He worked in the pig breeding industry before joining the Meat and Livestock Commission in 1988. In 2003 he was seconded to be Director of the new government-funded Genesis Faraday Partnership (GFP) working with industry and the research base on genetics and genomics of farm animals. In 2009 he was appointed Director of the new Technology Strategy Board Biosciences Knowledge Transfer Network serving the agriculture, food and industrial bioscience sectors.

Chris is a member of the BBSRC Bioscience Skills and Careers Panel and a former member of the BBSRC Sustainable Agriculture Strategy Panel.  Current appointments include: membership of the National Standing Committee on Farm Animal Genetic Resources, a Trustee of the Roslin Foundation and Chairman of the Genomia seed-fund.  He co-ordinates two large EU research consortia working on livestock genomics, SABRE and Quantomics, with a total budget of €31m and more than 40 participant organisations. 

Professor Andrew Webster (Chairman)
Director, Science and Technology Studies Unit (SATSU), University of York

Prof Webster studied in Boston, London and York where he completed his doctoral studies in the sociology of science. Some twenty years later, after teaching at what is now Anglia University in Cambridge, he found himself back in the Department with a chair in the sociology of science and technology. In 1988 Prof Webster established the Science and Technology Studies Unit (SATSU) which was relocated to York in 1999. The Unit has a number of core areas of work, particularly knowledge dynamics, the sociology of health innovations, and the commercialisation of public research. In 1999 Prof Webster was appointed Director of the ESRC's Innovative Health Technologies Programme, a £5 million initiative which explores the impact health technologies have on society and conversely the way society shapes and gives meaning to these same technologies. Prof Webster is also a member of various ESRC Committees, a Council member of the European Association for the Study of Science, Technology and Society, on the UK government's Post-Genomics Co-ordinating Committee and on the Medical Research Councils 'Advisory Committee on Scientific Advances in Genetics'. I have been PI to a number of ESRC, EC and other funded research projects.