Professor Dame Kay Davies CBE, FRS   Dr Lee's Professor of Anatomy, Honorary Director, MRC Functional Genetics Unit, University of Oxford

Professor Davies is a co-founder of Summit plc. She received her BA in chemistry in 1973 and D.Phil in biochemistry in 1976 from the University of Oxford. She subsequently held several posts with the MRC in both London and Oxford before becoming Professor of Genetics at Oxford in 1995. In 1998, she became Professor of Anatomy and Head of Department of Human Anatomy and Genetics, and is also Honorary Director of the MRC Functional Genetics Unit at Oxford and a Co-Director of the Oxford Centre for Gene Function. Prof Davies is world renowned for her work in the area of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) and has established the physical map of the DMD gene. The discovery of utrophin, a gene closely related to dystrophin, was also made by her research group and the up-regulation of utrophin is proposed as a potential treatment of this disease. Prof Davies has published over 350 research papers. Her invaluable contribution to science has been recognised by the presentation of numerous awards including the S. Mouchly Small MD, Scientific Achievement Award, Muscular Dystrophy Association, USA (1997) and the Gaetano Conte Prize in Basic Myology (2002). Prof Davies was elected to the Fellowship of Royal Society in 2003 and received her CBE in 1995.

Professor Stephen G Davies   Waynflete Professor of Chemistry, University of Oxford

Professor Davies received his BA (1973) and DPhil (1975) from the University of Oxford. He subsequently held an ICI Postdoctoral Fellowship (1975-1977 with Prof Malcolm Green) and a NATO Fellowship (1977-1978 with Prof Sir Derek Barton) before joining the CNRS at Gif-sur-Yvette collaborating with Dr Hugh Felkin. Prof Davies returned to Oxford in 1980 to a University Lectureship and then Professorship, as well as a Fellowship of New College. He has since published over 420 research papers, and has been the recipient of a variety of awards for his contribution to organic synthesis, including the Hickinbottom Fellowship (1984), the Pfizer Award for Chemistry (1985, 1988), the Royal Society of Chemistry Award for Organometallic Chemistry (1987), the Royal Society of Chemistry Bader Award (1989), the Tilden Lecture Award (1996), the Royal Society of Chemistry Award in Stereochemistry (1997), and the Prize Lectureship of the Society of Synthetic Organic Chemistry, Japan (1998). Prof Davies is also a member of the Executive Editorial Board for Tetrahedron publications, and Founder and Editor in Chief for Tetrahedron: Asymmetry. He was elected to the Waynflete Chair of Chemistry in February 2006. In 1992 Prof Davies founded the spin-out chemistry service company Oxford Asymmetry, followed in 1995 by the combinatorial chemistry company Oxford Diversity. These companies were combined in 1998 for the IPO of Oxford Asymmetry International (OAI), which merged in 2000 with Evotec (to form Evotec-OAI). In early 2003, Prof Davies instigated the foundation of Summit plc.

Professor Francesco Muntoni   Paediatric Neurologist, Imperial College London

Professor Muntoni is Professor of Paediatric Neurology at Imperial College London and a leading clinician in neuromuscular diseases. He completed his medical training in Child Neurology and Psychiatry in 1989. Since then he has worked primarily on clinical, genetic and therapeutic aspects of childhood neuromuscular disorders initially in Italy, and from 1993, in London. Originally appointed as Lecturer at the Neuromuscular Centre of the Hammersmith Hospital, he was made Head of the Unit in 1996 and has been Professor of Paediatric Neurology since 1998. In March 2004, he was appointed Principal Investigator of a UK government-backed consortium investigating treatments for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

Professor Roger Patient   Weatherall Institute for Molecular Medicine, University of Oxford

Professor Patient is Research Professor at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Oxford. He was Professor of Molecular Genetics at King’s College London and Professor of Genetics at the University of Nottingham prior to his current post. Prof Patient is one of the first people, more than 10 years ago, to work on zebrafish (Danio rerio) in the UK and has tremendous knowledge of zebrafish systems for scientific testing. At the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, his research is focused on the genetic regulatory networks of blood and the cardiovascular system.

Professor Edith Sim   Head of Department of Pharmacology, University of Oxford

Professor Sim graduated from Edinburgh University in Biochemistry and came to Oxford in 1973. She gained her D.Phil in 1976. After two years funded by a Royal Society European Exchange Fellowship in Grenoble studying membrane proteins, she returned to Oxford as a Demonstrator in the Biochemistry Department. She was appointed to a Wellcome Trust Senior Lecturer in the Pharmacology Department in 1983 to study individual susceptibility to immunotoxicity and has developed an interest in Arylamine N-acetyltransferases (NAT) as a result of these studies. Prof Sim has determined the first three-dimensional structure of the NAT enzyme, which in its various forms is potentially a therapeutic target for tuberculosis and other diseases. She became Head of Department in 2000 and is also a Fellow at St Peter's College, Oxford.

Dr Jean–Paul Vincent   MRC National Institute for Medical Research, London

Dr Vincent is a Senior Staff Scientist at the MRC's National Institute for Medical Research, UK. He received a PhD in biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1986 before working as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco. In 1993, he moved to the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in the UK before taking up his current post in 1997. Dr Vincent has worked extensively on the genetics of fruitflies (Drosophila melanogaster) and has a particular interest in the Wingless signaling pathway, pertinent to colon cancer in humans. The excellence of his research has been recognised by publication in world-leading journals, which include Nature and Cell.