New Fellows of 2026

Dr Huwaida Bulhan is a physician and public health specialist with over 15 years of experience at the intersection of clinical research, health equity, and pharmaceutical medicine. Based in Nairobi, Kenya, she serves as Africa Region Lead for Diversity and Inclusion in Clinical Trials at Sanofi R&D, where she leads the strategic expansion of inclusive clinical research across Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa.

Huwaida began her career as a doctor in a public healthcare system in Kenya – an experience that has shaped her conviction that clinical research must serve the communities whose data makes it possible. She went on to pioneer the first global industry oncology and neuroscience clinical trials for innovative products in development in Sub-Saharan Africa, building research capacity across five new countries and running over 20 global interventional trials during her tenure at Roche.

Her work is anchored in a belief that Africa is not an emerging market for global pharma – it is an established scientific partner that has been systematically undervalued. She is a vocal advocate for moving the industry from a transactional model to one of genuine investment: making African communities stakeholders in the science, not just subjects of it.

Huwaida serves on the Executive Board of OneWe Reach (OWR), the Advisory Board for the Cross-Pharma Capacity Development Initiative led by the Science Foundation for Africa, and the Steering Committee of the Clinical Research Society of Kenya. She is the recipient of the OWR Global Icon Award 2024 and the Muslim Women in Business Leadership Award 2025/2026, and was named in the 100 Most Impactful Women Shaping the Future of Biopharma, Healthcare and Life Sciences by BLOC in 2025.

She is a published author in the British Medical Journal, and has spoken at the World Health Summit Regional Meeting at UNON Nairobi, the TCIS Conference in Johannesburg, and The Africa Roundtable in Berlin, as well as many other international forums, consistently championing Africa’s sovereign health future on the global stage.

Dr Camilla Chong is a UK-qualified physician with more than 25 years of leadership experience across the global life sciences sector. She has held senior positions within leading top tier pharmaceutical and biotech companies spanning Clinical Research & Development, Medical Affairs, and Commercialisation.

Dr Chong serves as Chief Medical Officer of InflaRx, where she is responsible for the strategic and clinical leadership of the company’s development portfolio. Throughout her career, she has led multidisciplinary teams across multiple geographies and global functions, delivering programmes across a broad range of therapeutic areas and stages of the product lifecycle.

Dr Chong brings a unique combination of scientific, clinical, regulatory, and commercial expertise, enabling organisations to navigate complex healthcare challenges, assess risk effectively, and make informed strategic decisions.

Dr Romillie Cruz is Vice President, Medical and Scientific Services at Simbec Orion, where she provides executive leadership in medical governance, clinical development and patient safety across global clinical research programmes. With more than 20 years of experience in pharmaceutical medicine, she has held senior leadership roles spanning clinical development and medical and safety oversight within international CRO environments supporting pharmaceutical and biotechnology sponsors.

Her experience includes building and leading medical and safety teams across Asia Pacific, India, the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States, supporting regional and global clinical development programmes across diverse clinical research and regulatory environments.

Throughout her career, Dr Cruz has been committed to advancing ethical clinical research, strengthening medical governance and supporting the development of future pharmaceutical physicians through mentorship and education. Her experience spans a broad range of therapeutic areas, including oncology, rare diseases, immunology, neurology and dermatology, with a particular interest in ensuring that patient perspectives remain central to clinical development.

In addition to her professional responsibilities, she is passionate about patient advocacy and rare disease awareness, and is the founder of R.A.R.E. (Raising Awareness of Rare Diseases and Encouraging Engagement), an initiative aimed at strengthening dialogue between patients, clinicians and the research community. Her work is guided by a strong sense of purpose: helping ensure that clinical research gives patients, particularly those with limited treatment options, greater hope, visibility and voice.

Dr Patrick De Barr is a Consultant Pharmaceutical Physician and Senior Medical Director, currently serving as UK Oncology Medical Head at GSK. He holds a Certificate of Completion of Training in Pharmaceutical Medicine, an MBA from Imperial College London, and a medical degree from the University of Nottingham.

Patrick has more than 15 years’ experience across clinical medicine, clinical research, medical affairs and health technology assessment. In his current role, he provides strategic medical leadership across oncology, leading a multidisciplinary medical organisation spanning solid tumours and haematology. His work focuses on evidence generation, launch readiness, scientific engagement and supporting timely patient access to innovative medicines.

Patrick also serves as a Pharmaceutical Physician Committee Member at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, where he has contributed to more than 90 technology appraisals across multiple therapeutic areas. In this role, he evaluates clinical evidence, uncertainty and value to support national reimbursement decisions and equitable access to new therapies.

Before joining the pharmaceutical industry, Patrick trained and worked as an anaesthetic and intensive care physician in the NHS. He subsequently gained clinical trial experience as a research physician, contributing to Phase I–III studies, before progressing into senior medical leadership roles in the pharmaceutical industry.

Dr Mayura Deshpande MBBS, PGDip, MSc (Clin Res) FFPM is registered pharmaceutical physician with over 15-years of experience in clinical medicine, clinical development, and medical affairs who is passionate about patient care.

Mayura has held life science leadership roles at country and regional roles in various pharmaceutical companies in medical affairs. She is also very accomplished in her academic background having earned a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) degree from Karnataka University, as well as Master of Clinical Research (MSc) at Cranfield University.

She completed a post-graduate diploma in Health and Social Care Management from Oxford Brookes University and pursued ongoing development and continuous learning including studies in Cancer Genomics and Precision Oncology through Harvard Medical School.

Mayura is a Fellow of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine, a visiting lecturer at King’s College supervising students for MSc Clin Dev and MSc Med Affairs. She is also an Officer of FPM’s Board of Examiners and is involved in multiple forums looking at patient participation in pharmaceutical industry.

Bruce Forrest is a pharmaceutical industry physician with a career spanning 40 years in the development of pharmaceuticals, vaccines and biological drugs. A medical graduate of the University of Adelaide, South Australia, he pursued postgraduate research in mucosal immunity, earning a Doctor of Medicine for the first demonstration in humans of the correlation of antigen-specific mucosal antibody production and mucosal B cell systemic trafficking. He has an MBA from the Warwick Business School, UK.

Dr Forrest’s career has included leading the earliest clinical development of HIV vaccines, initiating clinical trials in China, Australia, and Thailand, through being the global clinical team leader for Menjugate at Chiron Corporation, and at Wyeth leading the clinical activities supporting the market authorizations for RotaShield (EU), Prevnar, and, FluMist. As Vice President, Regional Research, he was responsible for all Wyeth’s Japan and Asia-Pacific R&D, achieving the first approvals in Japan of Enbrel, Prevnar, Mylotarg, and Isovorin. As Senior Vice President at Wyeth, Dr Forrest was responsible for all late phase clinical and pharmaceutical development activities for vaccines, including leading the development organization responsible for Prevnar 13 and Trumenba.

Dr Forrest pioneered the early adoption of technologies to advance clinical trials and product approvals, including fully paperless electronic data capture, and the first eCTD submission in Japan.

After leaving Pfizer in 2010, he established Hudson Innovations, a pharmaceutical consulting firm that brought together teams of independent individuals with a range of skills and experience across pharmaceutical development to support the growth of small biotechnology companies. He is currently Chief Scientific Officer and Board Director at GPN Vaccines, Inc..

Dr Forrest is the owner of an independent investment advisory firm, Aeolian Advisors Corporation, and is an investment banker and co-head of Life Sciences Investment Banking with Young America Capital, a New York based investment bank.

Stuart Kendrick has spent 14 years in drug development, including the rare experience of being involved in different roles in the development of a single medicine from the first identification of the disease-target pairing through to global regulatory approvals. In that time he has had leadership roles in Translational Medicine, Clinical Development, Drug Safety and Medical Affairs at GSK, across therapy areas including respiratory, infectious disease and hepatology. In his current role as VP Medicine Development Lead he has overall accountability for development of an investigational medicine, with strategic oversight of several large late-phase clinical trials, as well as product safety and manufacturing, translational, biology and epidemiology studies.

Stuart grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland and qualified in Physiology from Cambridge, Medicine from Oxford, and a PhD from Newcastle University, where his thesis explored genetic and epigenetic determinants of macrophage function in liver disease. His specialty training was in Internal Medicine, Gastroenterology and Hepatology in Nottingham, London and Newcastle upon Tyne. He was a senior academic Hepatologist in Newcastle before transitioning to industry research.

In addition to his core accountabilities, Stuart chairs GSK’s Hepatic Safety Panel and is the Responsible Officer for GSK’s GMC-registered physicians. He is an honorary consultant hepatologist at Cambridge University Hospitals where he sees patients on Friday mornings.

Dr Mark Levick is a clinical microbiologist with more than 25 years’ experience across medicines regulation, pharmaceutical R&D, executive leadership and board governance.

A medical graduate of the University of Newcastle, Australia, he trained in infection pathology and tropical medicine, and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia and the Australasian College of Tropical Medicine. Awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship to the University of Cambridge, he was a clinical research fellow in tropical medicine at Addenbrooke’s Hospital and completed his PhD in vaccine development, using infective-stage expression profiling and reverse genetics in early ‘genome-to-vaccine’ DNA vaccination studies to identify novel vaccine targets for leishmaniasis.

Alongside hospital practice, Mark worked as a specialist medical assessor at the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, developing a career-long focus on biopharmaceuticals, translational medicine and clinical benefit–risk before holding senior global R&D leadership roles at GSK and Novartis. Across his career, he has contributed to 13 marketing approvals, including first-in-class, new-indication and biosimilar medicines, and earlier proof-of-concept work on two further first-in-class medicines.

As CEO of Alvotech, he led its transition from an early-stage biosimilars business to a NASDAQ-listed commercial biopharmaceutical company. He is now a board member and Chair of the Innovation Committee at LEO Pharma, a board member of InterAx Biotech, partner at Thaxton Philip Consulting, and a practising executive coach and faculty member on the University of Cambridge’s postgraduate coaching psychology programme.

I am a full tenured professor in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine and the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center at Rush in Chicago, Illinois, the United States of America. During my 25-year career at Rush, I have held many research leadership roles including being the Assistant Vice Provost of Clinical Research for Rush University from 2021 to 2023. My academic career intent is to design collaborative science infrastructures that generate impactful knowledge through clinical trials and other discovery research.

My overall goal is to develop dynamic systems to conduct clinical trials with broad communities for the maintenance of healthy longevity and the prevention and treatment of its key drivers such as Alzheimer’s disease. In 2024, I founded RCS Consultants, LLC, in order to support small and large companies in the health innovation ecosystem working to accelerate the translation of interventions designed to improve health for all.

I am the current Past President of the Academy of Physicians in Clinical Research in the United States. Also, I serve as the organization’s delegate to the International Federation of Associations of Pharmaceutical Physicians and Pharmaceutical Medicine (IFAPP). In my free time, I enjoy gardening with perennials native to the Midwest region of the United States along with visiting arboretums around the world.

Dr Jina Swartz, MB BCh, MSc Med, PhD, FMedSci, trained in Internal Medicine and Neurology in South Africa, obtaining her MBBCh (MD) degree cum laude, followed by an MSc Medicine (Neurology) at the University of the Witwatersrand. After the award of a post-doctoral research fellowship in 1998, she completed a PhD in Neurogenetics at the University of Cambridge, exploring molecular mechanisms of neurodegeneration in Huntington’s disease and trinucleotide disorders. She was elected to the Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2020 for her internationally recognised global expertise in neurodegenerative disorders and neuropsychiatric drug development.

Jina has outstanding experience in clinical neurology, basic research and within the pharmaceutical industry in Translational Medicine and Global Clinical Development. She possesses internationally recognised expertise in Neuropsychiatric drug development, including Alzheimer’s disease, related dementias, Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, cognitive dysfunction, pain, multiple sclerosis and epilepsy. As well as practising in academic Neurology practice and research, she has thirty years’ experience in Neuroscience Clinical Development spanning exploratory research, Phase I, II and III global programmes through to drug registration. Jina also holds expertise in rare neurological diseases including Huntington’s disease, Friedreich’s and spinocerebellar ataxias and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.

Jina was previously Chief Medical Officer at FreeOx, developing a novel therapeutic approach in Acute Ischaemic Stroke; CMO at Prilenia, a Neuroscience biopharmaceutical company developing pridopidine (a sigma1 receptor agonist) for treatment of Huntington’s disease, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Vanishing White Matter Disease and other rare neurodegenerative conditions. Before this, she was CMO at Exciva, a biotech focussing on treating neuropsychiatric symptoms in patients with dementia.

She was also the Therapeutic Area Head of Neuroscience in Global Clinical Drug Development at Merck and Co. Here she led Clinical Development, Regulatory, Policy, Commercial, Operational, Business Development and Market Access activities across EMEA and headed global CNS development programmes. An expert in Alzheimer’s disease drug development, having led Eisai’s donepezil programme, she joined Merck to coordinate the development of verubecestat. Jina also led the Alzheimer’s “What if” Policy Roundtable sessions at the European Parliament, influencing policy change in EU dementia strategy.

In previous roles of increasing seniority and responsibility in four multinational pharmaceutical companies (GSK, Eisai, Signant Health and Takeda), Jina applied significant expertise relating to supporting and directing regulatory approval of novel drugs including donepezil, perampanel, zonisamide, suvorexant, lecanemab and gefapixant. She also possesses outstanding translational medicine expertise, working to bridge the preclinical-clinical divide. Jina continues to spearhead extensive relationships with academic Neuroscience experts in the UK and world-wide, facilitating collaboration and interaction between industry and academia. She is an industry board member at Ataxia UK and was external Advisory Board Member for the Sheffield Biomedical Research Centre. She sits on the Boards of Arts for Dementia, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Ataxia UK, Parkinson’s UK, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine and the British Neuroscience Association.

Jina has been a member of EPAD, European Brain Council, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine (FPM), British Neurological Association (BNA), European Federation of Neurological Associations (EFNA), EFPIA, IMI, TransCelerate, ABPI New Medicines and Data Strategic Leadership Group, Dementia Industry Group (DIG) and an impact assessor for the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021.

She was an invited guest lecturer on the Drug Development Pharmacology MSc at Kings College London and maintained clinical practice, as Honorary Neurology Consultant at Imperial College London, managing patients with cognitive disorders. Prior to this, she performed clinical assessment of torture victims, compiling medico-legal reports at the Medical Foundation for Care of Victims of Torture in London.

Jina leads global policy programmes in health inequalities in Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and established the Health in Internal Displacement Network for (HIDN) to promote awareness of this largely hidden, but significant, health concern. She convened an expert workshop of leading health researchers from fifteen countries at the Academy of Medical Sciences, then formulated a Policy Brief submitted to the UN Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement and presented key findings and policy takeaways to initiate discussion of implications for policy and operations with global organisations. This resulted in a publication in Nature last year, commissioned by the journal.

In addition, she continues to publicly disseminate her work globally, with over one hundred manuscripts published in peer-reviewed journals and presentations delivered at international conferences, European Parliament, Royal Society, Academy of Medical Sciences. Jina has also contributed to the compilation and dissemination of numerous global health policy-related documents with far-reaching impact.

Dr David Williams MB BCh, MSc, DCH, Dip Ther, FRACGP, FACRRM is a GMC-registered physician with over 36 years of medical practice and more than 26 years of experience in pharmaceutical medicine. He has held senior leadership positions across the UK, Europe and globally, including UK Medical Director, Senior Regional Medical Director Europe, Global Head of Scientific Communications and Medical Education, Global Head of Real-World Evidence and Clinical Outcomes, and Head of Global Health Economics and Outcomes Research.

Throughout his career, David has combined scientific leadership, medical governance and healthcare innovation to advance the practice of pharmaceutical medicine. He has successfully led organisations through periods of significant regulatory scrutiny, including MHRA and PMCPA audits and inspections, while establishing robust governance frameworks and cultures of compliance. His leadership as UK Medical Director of Sanofi UK and Ireland was instrumental in guiding the organisation through a major compliance transformation programme. David has led international medical affairs, evidence generation and capability-building initiatives spanning more than 120 countries and 1,500 medical professionals. He has been a pioneer in the application of real-world evidence, advanced analytics, artificial intelligence and digital research methodologies to improve healthcare decision-making and strengthen the strategic contribution of medical affairs.

His expertise spans numerous therapeutic areas, including dermatology, oncology, respiratory medicine, diabetes, endocrinology, nephrology, neurology, rheumatology, gastroenterology and infectious diseases. He has extensive experience working with health technology assessment bodies, including NICE, SMC, AWMSG and HAS, and has contributed to healthcare policy and evidence-generation initiatives internationally.

David currently coordinates Medical Affairs for the Ethical Medicines Industry Group (EMIG). He has also contributed to the wider profession through roles with the Office of Health Economics Policy Board, the HTAi Policy Forum and the Centre for Innovation in Regulatory Science HTA Advisory Board. Through leadership, mentoring, education and innovation, he has made a sustained contribution to advancing pharmaceutical medicine and developing future leaders within the specialty.

Joshua Vecht has over 16 years’ experience in Medical Affairs following a 13‑year clinical career. He qualified from the Royal Free Hospital, part of the University of London (with merit) and then attained MRCS, training in Cardiothoracic Surgery. He undertook academic research in cardiovascular medicine at Imperial College and also received an Excellence in Patient Care Award from Barts. He then transitioned into Medical Affairs in the Pharmaceutical Industry, and has held senior leadership roles, most recently with global responsibility for Medical Affairs governance, leading the development of frameworks for several areas of Medical Governance. He has also contributed to teams advancing treatment in immunology and cardiovascular disease. He remains a licensed practitioner, revalidating through the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine, and contributes to national and international compliance initiatives. He is committed to advancing Pharmaceutical Medicine through governance and in pursuit of enabling ethical, patient-focused healthcare at scale.