Speaker

Dr. Laurent Metz is a global healthcare leader with over 30 years of experience in medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and vaccines, spanning the full product lifecycle from early discovery to post-launch. His expertise includes health economics, market access, medical affairs, commercial strategy, and scaling up organizations to achieve sustainable growth.
He spent 28 years at Johnson & Johnson in senior leadership roles across Europe, the United States, Latin America, Africa, and a decade in Asia-Pacific. In Singapore, he established the Market Access Center of Excellence for Medical Devices, leading regional teams and pioneering value-based healthcare initiatives with policymakers, providers, and academic institutions. Later, as Global Market Access & Policy Head for Johnson & Johnson Global Public Health, he advanced access strategies for breakthrough technologies in underserved markets, including vaccines and treatments for infectious diseases.

Dr. Metz has also served as Chief Medical Officer for Wandercraft, guiding clinical, access, regulatory, and commercial strategies for advanced robotic exoskeletons in the U.S. market. He is a Partner at Robin Hood Ventures, an active early-stage investor group in healthcare, life sciences, and technology, and serves on the Board of StarkAge, a biotech company specializing in oncology and senescence cell-targeted therapies.
His career reflects a commitment to building bridges across markets, fostering innovation, and improving global patient access to transformative healthcare solutions.

Bill Moran is currently the Publisher of the Science Family of Journals. In his role, Bill and the publishing team are responsible for content, rights and permissions, licensing, scientific meetings, publishing collaborations, advertising, outreach, Science Careers and all publishing operations. During his 20 years with AAAS, Bill has been instrumental in broadening the association’s international publishing activities and collaborations. He spearheaded the launch of the Beijing office; in addition, he developed an international collaboration program for Science Publishing that encompasses Science Careers outreach. Bill has also worked with the Science editorial team to raise awareness of Science/AAAS within academic institutions in developed and developing countries. The first ten years of Bill’s career were with the Nature Publishing Group. Bill was a senior VP of Nature America based in New York City. Before moving to Science/AAAS, Bill was recruited by Informa based in the Boston area to help with their launch into the STM market. While at Informa, Bill was responsible for several new product launches and the acquisition of new journals, including the redesign of online products.

Managing Director and Head of Healthcare, VMS Group; Investment Partner, Panacea Venture

Andrew Ng is a Managing Director and Head of Healthcare of VMS Group and an Investment Partner of Panacea Venture. He has over 13 years of experience in the healthcare industry across Asia and the US. Andrew has established the healthcare practice of VMS Group in 2017 and led multiple growth-stage investments for VMS across the therapeutics, diagnostics, medical device and CRO/CDMO verticals. He has also served as an Investment Partner of Panacea Venture, a global healthcare venture capital firm, since 2021.

Prior to that, Andrew was responsible for the China Healthcare Equity Research at Barclays Capital based in Hong Kong. Before that, he was an investment banker covering healthcare clients across the Asia Pacific region at Barclays Capital with a focus in healthcare cross-border M&A. Andrew started his career as a management consultant at ZS Associate in the United States advising global pharma on sales & marketing strategy and operations.

Andrew has been on the board of multiple companies that carry out product development, manufacturing and sales in the biotechnology, medical equipment and CXO industries. These companies include New Horizon Health, Chime Biologics, Jade Biomedical, SyMap Medical, Yizun Biomedicine and Profusa.

Andrew received an MBA from INSEAD, a M.Eng. degree and a BS degree in Operations Research & Engineering from Cornell University.

Norazli Mohamad Nor (“Azli”) is a Venture a Partner and a founding member of Xeraya Capital, having spearheaded its preparatory aspects leading to its establishment while in Khazanah Nasional (“Khazanah”). Within Xeraya, Azli held a dual role in Investments deal-making as well as a corporate function managing a strategic fund, Mudharabah Innovation Fund (“MIF”). Azli has a background that merges engineering and finance, gaining accreditation as a Professional Engineer with the Board of Engineers Malaysia while holding a Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical and Electronics) from Imperial College, London, United Kingdom, and an MBA with Finance specialisation from International Islamic University Malaysia.

Dr. Pan’s research focuses on understanding the mechanisms underlying fate decision in human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs); and on generating functional neural stem cells (NSC) or hematopoietic/immune cells from hPSCs for clinical purposes. He has published more than 30 peer- reviewed papers as corresponding author or first author in decent scientific journals, such as Nature Methods, Cell Stem Cell, Nature Communications.

Dr. Duanqing Pei is Chair Professor of Regenerative Biology at School of Life Sciences, Westlake University. Dr. Pei received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991; trained as a postdoctoral fellow at University of Michigan from 1991 to 1996. Dr. Pei’s primary interest is to understand cell fate control. His lab pioneered cellular reprograming and discovered: 1) Vitamin C as an epigenetic regulator that enhances cellular reprograming through histone and DNA demethylations; 2) Epithelial to mesenchymal (EMT) and mesenchymal to epithelial (MET) transitions as drivers for iPSC generation; 3) Urine epithelial cells as a source of stating cells for reprograming. He has proposed a chromatin open-close binary logic for cell fate control and an conceptual interface between pluripotent and somatic states. These concepts are still driving current works in the lab. Dr. Pei won national natural science award twice and the distinguished achievement medal from Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is EMBO Associate Member and MAE (Member of Academia Europa).

Bo Peng is a professor at Fudan University. He has been honored as a Distinguished Professor under the Chang Jiang Scholars Program by the Ministry of Education, a recipient of the National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scientists, an Elsevier Highly Cited Chinese Researcher. He has received numerous accolades, including the Zhong Nanshan Youth Science and Technology Innovation Award and the Huaxia Medical Science and Technology Youth Award.

Prof. Peng’s research is centered on microglia in the central nervous system, with a particular focus on elucidating the mechanisms of their aging, death, and regeneration. Based on these insights, he has pioneered a novel therapeutic strategy involving microglia replacement for the treatment of neurological disorders, and in 2020, his team achieved the world’s first efficient microglia replacement. Furthermore, his group conducted the world’s first clinical trial of microglia replacement therapy in 2024, demonstrating its effectiveness and paving a new path for treating neurological diseases. His key research findings have been published as last author in high-impact journals including Science (2025), Nature Neuroscience (2018), Nature Aging (2023), Neuron (2021), Cell Reports (2020), Nature Communications (2022), and eLife (2023).

Phoenix Peng, Distinguished Researcher at Tianfu Jincheng Laboratory, Founder of NeuroXess, and Vice Chairman of the Brain-Computer Interface and Interaction Branch of the Chinese Neuroscience Society. A well-known serial entrepreneur, he has founded multiple companies across various sectors, including life sciences, SaaS, O2O, database marketing, SNS, and enterprise applications. He previously founded the group-buying platform 24Quan and the SaaS company Keruyun, which was fully acquired by Alibaba for 1 billion RMB in 2019, after which he served as Senior Vice President of Alibaba Local Life Services. In 2021, he founded NeuroXess, an invasive BCI company, which is currently the most clinically advanced, commercially successful, and influential BCI company in China.

Since February 2017 Anna has been coordinating international relations of the Polish Academy of Sciences. As the head of the unit, she is responsible for recommendations on international policy, coordination of bilateral and multilateral programs, as well as overseeing the activities of the PAS representation centers abroad. Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, she coordinated support actions for scholars affected by the war. In 2025, she was appointed by the Polish Minister for Science and Higher Education as an expert responsible for building the strategy of internationalization of science sector in Poland. Prior to joining the Polish Academy of Sciences, Anna had been coordinating international cooperation of the National Science Center, a Polish governmental funding agency set up to fund basic research. In the years 2007-2011, Anna worked in the industry sector. Anna is a recipient of many prestigious fellowships, including the Distinguished H. Humphrey Fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Starting from October 1st, Anna will serve as the Vice President of the Foundation for Polish Science.

Dr. Frank Pun serves as the Head of Insilico Hong Kong at Insilico Medicine, a leading biotechnology company specializing in AI-driven drug discovery. He leads a team of application scientists focusing on AI-powered biological target discovery, indication expansion, and drug repurposing. His team strives to bring cutting-edge AI technology (Pharma.AI) to scientists and medical professionals worldwide, helping them identify promising therapeutic targets and accelerate drug discovery and development. Frank received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2010. After graduation, he served as a visiting scholar, leading a team dedicated to studying human CNS diseases and cancer for several years. In 2019, he obtained an MBA from Rutgers Business School in the United States. Throughout his career, Frank has made significant contributions to the fields of target discovery and drug repurposing, with his work appearing in many industry collaborations and peer-reviewed publications.