Principal Consultants

Julie Barnes

Julie has over 20 years experience of the Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology industry.  At GlaxoSmithKline for 15 years, she built up experience of early R&D strategies for early clinical Proof of concept using biomarkers and imaging methods. Latterly, her role as Head of Neuroscience and Neuropharmacology in the Psychiatry Centre of Excellence for Drug Discovery led to more than 8 new discovery programs feeding the development pipeline.

Most recently, Julie was Director and Chief Scientific Officer at BioWisdom Ltd, a global healthcare technology company. In this role, she established and led the professional services business and commercialised its safety intelligence solution.

Julie sits on several advisory boards, including the External Advisory Group for the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre in Mental Health based at Kings College, London.

Julie holds a first class honours degree in Pharmacology and a PhD in Neuroscience.

Chris Hodkinson

Chris has over 25 years of operational experience, has experience of both commercial and technical management and positions in blue chip companies including GlaxoSmithKline, Camelot Group and ICL.

William Bains

William Bains is a respected scientist, experienced consultant and company founder. 

After degrees at Oxford and Warwick and research posts in the UK and US, William worked for PA Consulting Group before joining Merlin Biosciences as Head of Technology. In 1999 he founded Amedis Pharmaceuticals and served as its founding CSO. William founded Delta-G in 2004 and sits on the Boards of MultiProSys, Karus and the SULIS fund.

Awarded the Toshiba Year of Invention prize in 1992, William is the author of numerous papers, patents and three books including the A-Z of Biotechnology.

Christopher Rumball

Christopher Rumball is a New Zealand-trained medical doctor with a PhD in the developmental origins of health and disease.  He has practised in New Zealand, Australia and the UK, as well as in Afghanistan in 2002-3 with Medecins sans Frontieres.  While a Gates Scholar at Cambridge University in 2007-8 studying Bioscience Enterprise, he was Chief Scientific Officer for AutoTB, a startup company that won major prizes at the business plan competitions of Cambridge University and Rice University in Texas.  in addition to consulting, he is also training in occupational and environmental medicine.

Hakim Yadi

Dr Hakim Yadi has now joined PA Consulting as a Consultant Analyst within the Technology and Innovation practice. Prior to joining PA, Hakim was at IMS Healthwhere he worked on assignments in therapy areas including oncology, analgesia and cardiology. Whilst at 4D-Biomedical his projects included the foundation of two new translational research institutes at UCL and King's College, and the structuring of a joint venture between a large NHS trust and the Leeds Institute of Genetics and Therapeutics. Hakim also worked on the formation of a biomarker and diagnostics start-up company based on intellectual property from a leading UK University. 

Martin Wehling

 Formerly Director of Discovery Medicine at Astra Zeneca’s cardiovascular site in Mölndal, Professor Wehling is full Professor of clinical pharmacology at the University of Heidelberg. He has longstanding experiences in translating basic science into human studies.  His specialist field is in bridging gaps between preclinical and clinical development, assembling, developing and profiling of biomarkers with particular assessment of their predictive value and translational medicine planning from early discovery/human stages to clinical trials, smart early human trial design and developmental decision trees (stop/go algorithms).
 
Professor Wehling has authored >200 scientific publications and several books, received prestigious awards (e.g. Heisenberg scholarship by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) and his scientific contributions to the identification and analysis of nongenomic steroid actions coined a novel science segment. He is also an experienced clinician with experiences in invasive cardiology (appr. 4000 cardiac catheters and interventions) and runs an outpatient clinic for geriatric pharmacotherapy.

Andrew Williams

Andrew is a Chartered Accountant and with a background in business planning and financial management for technology ventures.

Andrew studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge University and has worked in the imaging, software and biotechnology industries.  As VP Finance at Cambridge Antibody Technology Andrew was responsible, inter alia, for a secondary listing on NASDAQ and has extensive experience of business planning and scenario analyses to model the effective exploitation of IP.

Miranda Weston-Smith

Miranda has 20 years’ experience of working with emerging technology businesses, and a track record of commercialising early stage life sciences technology. She provides business development services in marketing, new venture development and technology transfer. She worked in the University of Cambridge for 7 years licensing technology and founding companies with researchers, has seed capital experience from 5 years at Cambridge Research and Innovation Limited, has carried out technology audits, and implemented the UK’s annual survey of technology transfer. She is a graduate in Natural Sciences, University of Cambridge, Fellow of the Linnean Society, and Member of the US Association of University Technology Managers.