Kristin Smedley is a TEDx speaker, award winning author, trailblazer for the disability community, and Mother of three children, two of whom were born blind and have achieved far beyond all grim expectations.

Kristin is Co-Founder and CEO of the only patient organization in the world for people living with the blindness her two sons are affected by, CRB1 LCA/RP. The Curing Retinal Blindness Foundation has raised over 4 million dollars and achieved a National Rare Eye Disease Awareness Day.  That legislation, H.R. #625, was the first in US history to be submitted in Braille and it advocates for better resources for blind and visually impaired Americans.

Kristin partnered with Spark Therapeutics to help achieve the first ever FDA approved gene therapy to treat an inherited retinal disease in the United States. She has done a TEDx Talk in New York City to change perceptions of blindness and she partnered with Comcast media to spread awareness of the inclusive X1 product.

Kristin is the author of the bestselling book Thriving Blind: Stories of Real People Succeeding Without Sight and a new children’s book, What I Can Be Is Up To Me.

Kristin co-founded ThrivingBlindAcademy.org to solve the employment, literacy, and financial crisis in the blind community.  She is Creator/Producer of the upcoming feature film “Curveball” to change perceptions of disability.

Eileen Moran is the Executive Director of Evidence Development Solutions at UBC, where she leads an operational team focused on designing and implementing innovative approaches that harness advanced technology and modern research methodologies. Her work delivers fit-for-purpose evidence on the safety and effectiveness of treatments, ultimately improving outcomes for patients.

Prior to joining UBC, Ms. Moran spent 25 years at Covance/Labcorp, where she held progressively senior roles, culminating in her position as Global Head of Delivery for Phase IV Solutions. Throughout her career, she has been instrumental in developing real-world evidence operational strategies that enhance understanding of the safety profiles and value propositions of medical treatments.

Almost 30 years of design experience across a variety of industries; including medical devices, automobiles, and consumer products/packaging. Chief advocate for the user on projects, ensuring their needs and perspectives are understood and prioritized throughout the design process. Specializing in making complex technologies simple and intuitive through a deep understanding of human factors and ergonomics and by performing rigorous research and usability studies. This user-centric approach is fundamental to Key Tech development teams.

Petra Rietschel, MD, PhD, joined BioNTech in November 2024 as Vice President, Clinical Development Oncology.

Before BioNTech, Dr Rietschel served as Global Clinical Lead for cemiplimab at Regeneron, where she oversaw global development of the PD-1 antibody across multiple tumor types, leading to several regulatory approvals. Before moving into industry, Dr Rietschel was an academic oncologist focused on breast cancer and melanoma, advancing translational research and biomarker-guided clinical trials.

Dr Rietschel earned her medical degree at the University of Heidelberg and continued her postgraduate training at Massachusetts General Hospital in internal medicine, followed by a fellowship in Oncology and Hematology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Her research interests include immuno-oncology, novel antibody platforms, and translational strategies to accelerate the development of innovative therapies for patients with cancer.

Alasdair has been with Gilead for three years, leading the Device Engineering group. Alasdair has spent 18yrs working on combination products for a number of pharma and biotech companies. Over the recent years he has played a pivotal role in the development and approval of a number of combination products spanning prefilled syringes, autoinjectors, and on-body delivery systems. He has also held roles in early concept development and commercial support during his career.

Alasdair holds a Master’s degree in Manufacturing Engineering from Cambridge University and a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Glasgow University.

Dr. Ruchi Shah is a seasoned professional with more than 10 years of experience in the field of nucleic acid delivery, gene editing, vaccines, vaccine adjuvant development, and biologics. Her area of expertise lies in pharmaceutical development of non-viral gene therapies with a focus on formulation and analytical strategies.

Ruchi started her career as Scientist at GSK Vaccines in 2015, focusing on SelfAmplifying RNA delivery for vaccines. In the following year, she continued her path at Intellia Therapeutics in delivering CRISPR Cas9-based therapeutics with lipid nanoparticles for hepatic and extra-hepatic delivery. She also worked at Moderna Therapeutics to enable high throughput screening in their platform group. Ruchi’s career progressed rapidly at Eli Lilly and Company where she led internal and external projects to develop lipid nanoparticle formulations for pre-clinical work to deliver a diverse portfolio of RNA therapeutics. In April 2023, Ruchi joined EMD Millipore Corporation within the Targeted mRNA Delivery team as the LNP Formulation Director, heading a lab team that is capable of both lipid design innovation and high throughput experimentation, advancing research and development in this rapidly expanding field.

In February 2025, Ruchi Shah joined GSK as the Head of US Drug Product within the Vaccines Technical and Development with a focus on developing mRNA vaccines and therapeutics.

Michelle Chawla is one of the Diversity Program Leads on the Diversity and Inclusion in Clinical Trials team at Merck. In this role, she collaborates cross-functionally with various teams, and specifically works within the lung and hematology teams to increase efforts for a more inclusive and diverse patient population in clinical trials. She is also a part of the diversity plan end-to-end process team and diversity plan template team at Merck and is currently leading the Financial Barriers workstream, which is a cross-functional team that is creating change to increase access to clinical trials from a financial perspective. She is extremely motivated and passionate about increasing access and improving representation in clinical trials.

Her other passions/hobbies include running, cycling, anything else outdoors, as well as spending time with her family including her two nieces and her cats!

Svilen leads TTP’s work in inhaled drug delivery. He has run some of TTP’s largest and most complex device development programmes, having taken several technologies from concept through detailed development and manufacturing scale-up. Svilen’s skillset combines navigating crowded IP spaces and global supply chains with a deep understanding of fundamental physics and device design. Svilen holds a PhD in Engineering (fluid dynamics) from the University of Cambridge.

Mike Eckrote is Senior Vice President of Strategic Solutions & Technology at Advarra, where he leads efforts to advance innovative approaches to clinical research and development. He brings more than a decade of experience in real-world data, technology solutions, and clinical trial optimization, with leadership roles spanning HealthVerity, Medable, and Medidata Solutions. Throughout his career, Mike has specialized in applying AI/ML, real-world evidence, and data-driven strategies to improve trial design, site selection, and patient outcomes.

Elizabeth Wood, PhD is the founder and CEO of JURA Bio, where she leads the development of AI-native drug discovery through breakthrough technologies that bridge computational design and physical synthesis.

Before founding JURA, Wood was a post-doc in the lab of Adam Cohen at Harvard’s Department of Chemistry and Physics. She pursued her PhD with Angela Belcher and Markus Buehler at MIT, and finished it under the supervision of Claus Helix-Nielsen at The Technical University of Denmark, Departments of Physics and Civil and Environmental Engineering. She has also worked at the University of Copenhagen’s SBiN Lab with Kresten Lindorff-Larsen, integrating computational methods with experimental studies to better predict RNA structure and to understand how the ability of proteins to change their shape helps modulate their function.

Wood is a visiting scientist at the Broad Institute, where she served on the founding steering committee of the Models, Inference & Algorithms (MIA) Initiative. From 2019-2021 she served as the primary organizer of the NeurIPS Workshop Learning Meaningful Representations of Life. She currently serves on the board of Project Clio, a Massachusetts-based 501(c)3 non-profit dedicated to advancing the study of the health impacts of pregnancy and understudied autoimmune diseases.

Allergist/Immunologist/Pediatrician. Chair, and Co-Founder of VGSK Technologies, Inc. Research Interests and objectives are to develop sustained respiratory and oral drug delivery for therapeutics to increase efficacy, safety and patient compliance.