Robert Thong has 30+ years’ experience in biopharma and healthcare. He has worked with over 100 different organizations across 14 countries. Formerly co-head of the Life Sciences Group at Capgemini in the 1990s, Robert then led the Bioscience team at COBA (now absorbed into the PwC Deals Strategy group) and subsequently became Managing Director of Datamonitor Healthcare (now Informa). He was a non-executive board member at Alpharma Inc. (US-listed mid-cap pharma, now part of Pfizer) and founded three small boutique consultancies in bioscience business. For the past 15 years, Robert has concentrated on SMEs and startups. Recent focus areas include bioinformatics and machine learning applied to precision medicine and clinical trials; contract research organisations; therapeutics discovery; delivery technologies for advanced medicinal products; cell & gene therapy.
Robert is a published authority on biopharma R&D alliances, lectures at Cambridge and UCL, judges for the Scrip Pharma Industry Awards and is writing a new book on the bioscience startup journey. Before his MBA from MIT, Robert gained his BSc Mathematics from Imperial College London and then qualified as a professional actuary, developing investment products for high net worth individuals. His aptitude for managing risk in regulated environments honed from these early beginnings continue to be applied today in bioscience innovation.