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Dr Shruthi Krishnamurthy

Senior Business Development and Licensing Manager, Mass General Brigham Innovation

Shruthi Krishnamurthy is a Senior Business Development and Licensing Manager at Mass General Brigham Innovation where she manages and licenses technologies from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Shruthi transitioned from academia into a career in technology transfer, first as an intern at University of California Davis Innovation Access office, and then as an Intellectual Property Analyst at the same office. At UC Davis, Shruthi gained knowledge and experience in all facets of technology transfer namely: contracting & licensing, intellectual property evaluation & management, and marketing & business development. Shruthi received her PhD from University of Vermont and completed her postdoctoral training at UC Davis where she studied how parasites enter human cells and survive human immune response. Shruthi’s kitchen has become her new laboratory where her family experiences the successes and failures of her gastronomical experiments.

Dr Marcelo Paes Gomes

Senior Scientist, Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture (Cefas) - Science Division of Fisheries

I'm a Marine Ecologist mainly interested in determining useful indicators of population responses to natural or anthropogenic drivers in order to support monitoring, management and advising tools. Such indicators are based on both biological/ecological biomarkers and modelling techniques. Spent more than 20 years in Academy in UK and Overseas, currently finding myself into the British Civil Service. Never felt so useful to Society before.

Dr Damaris A Odeny

Principal Scientist and Global Cluster Leader: Genomics, Pre-breeding & Bioinformatics, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT)

Damaris Odeny is a plant molecular breeder with research experience in Africa, Asia, Europe and USA. She has led and implemented genomics projects in both cereals and legumes, including the development of genomic resources in several orphan crops. Damaris works closely with other disciplines from national, private and international institutes to develop cutting-edge genomic resources for all ICRISAT mandate crops (sorghum, pearl millet, finger millet, groundnut, chickpea and pigeonpea) in her current global role. Prior to this, she worked as a senior researcher at the Agricultural Research Council (ARC), South Africa, where she played a key role in establishing molecular breeding processes for indigenous vegetables. Damaris is also passionate about mentoring of young upcoming scientists and has successfully mentored more than 50 scientists in her career to date.

Damaris earned her PhD in Plant Genetics (2006) from the University of Bonn (Germany) and completed a post-doctoral training from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in 2009 in Cologne, Germany.

Areas of expertise: Qualitative and quantitative genetics; Genetic mapping; Pre-breeding; Plant genetic engineering; Mutation breeding; Statistical genomics; High throughput genotyping and marker development; Next-Generation Sequencing and data analysis; Transcriptome analysis; Metagenomics