OUR PEOPLE: Innovation Board

The Innovation Board brings together the industrial and academic partners of the Consortium to determine the overarching challenges facing the pharmaceutical industry and predict future needs. It enables companies to collaborate on common research projects related to targets, technologies and therapeutic areas. The Consortium companies are in a position to fund collectively major projects of common interest. Its remit is to consider the future direction of therapeutic research and suggest innovative projects for collective company funding. Research projects selected by the Innovation Board are executed by a ‘task force’ of academic and company groups with appropriate expertise.

In memory of Professors Michael Wakelam and Chris Abell. Milner Innovation Board members, and friends, who are sadly no longer with us.

Michael will be remembered by the Milner for his invariably positive presence. He always reassured and motivated us when things were hard, keeping our spirits up and giving us the guidance we needed to progress. He was generous with his time and offered the use of anything at his disposal that would help towards the Milner vision. It is because of Michael that the Milner has such a fruitful, rewarding relationship with the Babraham Institute and campus. He understood the barriers and drivers for working with industry and had a passion equal to the Milner’s for cultural change and increased interactions between industry and academia. Above all, he was always warm and smiling. He always made us feel good about what we were doing and why we were doing it. He is sorely missed by all of us at the Milner. Michael was a member of the Milner Innovation Board from 2015-2020.

https://www.babraham.ac.uk/news/2020/04/memories-michael-colleagues-tribute

Chris will be remembered for his phenomenal impact on science, entrepreneurship and drug discovery in Cambridge. He will also be remembered personally by all who had the privilege of working with him. We all have our own stories and memories, many of which can be found on Chris’s memorial page here – https://www.remembr.com/en/professor.chris.abell. This memorial is to show our appreciation of Chris’s support of the Milner Therapeutics Institute. Chris was always supportive of the Milner from its inception. He was a proactive and incisive member of the Milner Governance Board from 2015 to 2020, challenging our ideas and providing insightful wisdom from his wealth of expertise. Most importantly, he gave us the space and freedom to experiment and test our new model of collaboration. He had an inherent understanding of research and innovation and balanced that with ongoing fervent support for entrepreneurship and translational research. Chris was instrumental in helping the Milner to find its feet within the University and the Cambridge cluster and we will always be grateful for his encouragement and support.