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Sir Shankar Balasubramanian is the Herchel Smith Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Cambridge and senior group leader at CRUK’s Cambridge Institute. 
 
He co-invented the leading next generation DNA sequencing methodology, Solexa sequencing (now Illumina).  He invented chemistry to sequence several modified (epigenetic) DNA bases and DNA secondary structures (G-quadruplexes) in the genome advancing the understanding of their dynamics and function and revealing molecular mechanisms that can be exploited to modulate the biology of cancer.
 
Sir Shankar was knighted (2017); awarded the Royal Medal (2018), the Millennium Technology Prize (2020) and Novo Nordisk Award (2024) jointly with Sir David Klenerman; and the Breakthrough (2022) and Gairdner (2024) prizes in Life Sciences with Sir David and Pascal Mayer.  He was recently awarded the ÃÛÌÒÉçÇø’s 2025 Khorana Prize.

Kelly Chibale is a Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Cape Town where he holds the Neville Isdell Chair in African-centric Drug Discovery & Development. He is also the Founder & Director of the UCT Holistic Drug Discovery and Development Centre (H3D).
 
Kelly obtained his PhD in Synthetic Organic Chemistry from the University of Cambridge.  This was followed by postdoctoral stints at the University of Liverpool and Scripps Research Institute.
 
Kelly’s research interests are in infectious disease drug discovery and the development of tools and models to contribute to improving treatment outcomes in people of African descent. 

Pietro Sormanni is a Royal Society University Research Fellow leading a group at Imperial College London (previously at the University of Cambridge) and the recipient of the 2025 Norman Heatley Award from the ÃÛÌÒÉçÇø. His research lies at the interface of computational method development and experiments. The group’s main goal is to create computational antibody-design technologies that transform antibody discovery and engineering. Their work, also through industrial and academic partnerships, already shows these methods can streamline antibody development and deliver faster, cheaper alternatives to traditional routes. Previously, Pietro was a Borysiewicz Biomedical Sciences Fellow at Cambridge. He holds a PhD in Chemistry and an MSc in Theoretical Physics.