Background

Chris has a mixed background combining statistics, AI for life sciences, and tech sector. He holds an undergraduate degree in Mathematics from Cambridge University, MSc in Artificial Intelligence from University of Edinburgh, and a PhD in Statistical Machine Learning from Imperial College London. He held a prestigious research fellowship at the Statistical Laboratory in University of Cambridge before becoming a tenured member of staff at Imperial College, where he still holds an honorary associate Professorship. Prior to joining QuantumBlack, he was Founder and CEO of an AI consultancy, and Director of R&D in a 100+ London-based tech company building programming languages for AI. 

Chris is recognized internationally for his expertise, with multiple technical publications in world-leading peer-reviewed journals. He is a recognized thought leader and public speaker in the field of Responsible AI and AI Safety, having designed the first postgraduate course on this at Imperial College.

Recent project highlights

As the Director of Innovation for Life Sciences, Chris offers expertise and leadership across numerous projects on AI/GenAI for biopharma R&D, spanning all the way from target ID to trial design. He operates both as technical leader of large teams, and as trusted advisor to Chief Science, Medical, Technology or Digital officers in their strategy and use case prioritization for AI/GenAI in R&D. 

For a large pharmaco, his work contributed to a novel endpoint being considered by regulatory agencies for rare diseases that can cut down trial duration and increase PoS significantly. 

For a biotech, he led a team discovering subpopulations of patients that were likely super-progressors in the disease of interest, helping target the trial to patients likely to benefit the most. 

He helped hospitals and pharmacos jointly co-develop their federated data and governance strategy. 

Most recently, he transformed the Clinical Development division of a large pharmaco by fostering broader adoption of RWD across 4 therapeutic areas, and >10 clinical programs.