ELRIG has had a very busy year in 2017, having run three hugely successful meetings attended by over 2000 delegates, and launched a series of local Networking Events throughout the UK. Alongside this we continue to grow alliances with partner organisations, and to further build our office capability. We have advanced the development of our 2018 meetings program, and continue to lay the foundations for future years.
None of this would be possible without the onging support from the exhibiting vendors who allow us to continue to offer our shows on a free of charge basis to delegates, the speakers, who give their time to present cutting edge research at our shows and the delegates who attend.
As 2017 draws to a close, we also bid farewell to 3 members of the ELRIG board: Liz Quinn (Takara), Stuart Baddeley (GlaxoSmithKline) and Kevin Moore (Tecan). Between them, Liz, Stuart and Kevin have served on the Board for over 15 years and provided outstanding leadership for ELRIG. While on the board Liz has served as both Science and Marketing Director and has been accountable for the creation and delivery of our marketing strategy. Stuart has served for many years as ELRIG Treasurer, and Kevin latterly as Chair of the Exhibitor Outreach Committee. We thank thank each of them for their outstanding commitment to ELRIG and the work they have done to develop this organisation. We are delighted that each will continue to serve as members of the General Committee.
The three vacant Board positions will be filled with three members of our General Committee, Christine Williams (Questae), Paul Kendall (Festo) and Melanie Leveridge (GlaxoSmithKline). We are delighted to welcome Chris, Mel and Paul to the ELRIG Board and very much look forward to working with them.
Chris Williams
Chris is an in vitro pharmacologist with over 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. She has worked at Pfizer, UCB, Ipsen and the NHS demonstrating a breadth of scientific, project, business and change management experience. She is an advocate for collaborative working (whether it be within or across organizations) and is passionate about what people and teams can achieve when they are engaged and empowered. This philosophy is the driving force behind her coaching & consulting business, Questae. She is Treasurer Elect and a Fellow of the British Pharmacological Society as well as being a member of the Board at ELRIG UK.
Melanie Leveridge
Melanie is the Director of GSK’s Screening Profiling and Mechanistic Biology UK team, within the global NCE (New Chemical Entity) molecular discovery organisation. She has been with GSK since 2005 and in this time has held roles of increasing responsibility in a variety of small molecule discovery platform groups, leading teams to deliver high throughput screening, lead optimisation profiling, assay development and mechanistic biology studies. Melanie is also passionate about technology and capability development, and has led numerous technology development collaborations particularly in the application of high throughput mass spectrometry techniques for screening and compound profiling, a topic on which she has published a number of peer reviewed articles. An active member of ELRIG for several years, Melanie currently serves as ELRIG Science Strategy Director.
Paul Kendall
Paul is an industrial engineer and has been involved in business development within industrial automation for nearly 25 years. During his career he has been involved in many industries including factory automation, process automation, food and beverage, printing and life sciences. Working within an international new markets group, Paul was heavily involved in the development of a market approach to the Lab Automation and Medical Device markets for Festo bringing together application knowhow with industrial automation robustness and best practice. Today, he leads a strategic team to develop the GB market as well as continuing to support business development internationally and is focused on delivering high quality and technically leading solutions into the market as well as helping customers develop and maintain competitive advantage. Paul is an active board member for the ELRIG (European Laboratory Research Interest Group) and has been a member of the ELRIG General Committee since 2016.
On behalf of the ELRIG Board, General Committee and ELRIG Operations team I would like to wish you all a Happy Christmas and a successful 2018.
Kind regards
Steve Rees
ELRIG Chairman