Martin Cawley joined Beatson Cancer Charity as CEO in July 2019.  Martin has been involved in the area of health and social care his entire his career.  He previously held senior positions in a number of Scotland’s charities and spent 3 years as Director of the National Lottery Community Fund in Scotland working with charities and community organisations. Martin has a comprehensive understanding of the wide-ranging challenges facing charitable organisations in Scotland.  Over the years he has been involved in a range of national forums and working groups related to areas of his work.  

Paul Newhouse, M.D. holds the Jim Turner Chair in Cognitive Disorders at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and is Professor of Psychiatry, Pharmacology, and Medicine. He is Director of the Vanderbilt Center for Cognitive Medicine (VCCM) in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He directs the Clinical Core for the Vanderbilt Alzheimer's Disease Research Center and is also a physician-scientist at the Veterans Affairs Tennessee Valley Health Systems Geriatric Research, Education, and Clinical Center (GRECC). He is an Army veteran and served in Operation Desert Storm.

Dr. Newhouse received his undergraduate education at Kansas State University, attended medical school at Loyola University, Stritch School of Medicine, and completed his residency training in psychiatry at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center followed by a fellowship in Geriatric Psychopharmacology Research at the National Institute of Mental Health. He is a diplomat of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in both General Psychiatry and Geriatric Psychiatry and was awarded the American Psychiatric Association Profiles in Courage award in 2002 and the Loyola University Alumnus of the Year Award for Research in 2017.

Dr. Newhouse's research has focused on brain cholinergic mechanisms in cognitive aging and the role of nicotinic cholinergic receptor systems in normal and impaired cognitive functioning in humans. His work established the importance of brain nicotinic cholinergic receptor systems in normal cognitive processes and established these receptors as a therapeutic target in Alzheimer’s disease and related conditions. He has pioneered the development of human models for new cognitive drug development including early first-in-human studies to the design and implementation of national multicenter trials. He has emphasized the development of novel cholinergic agents for clinical use in cognitive disorders and has established novel brain imaging and biomarker-based measures of brain drug effects through the use of novel pharmacologic‐imaging methodologies. His research has been continuously funded by NIH since 1989 and he is funded currently by the National Institute on Aging, the Alzheimer’s Association, the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, and other private companies and foundations.

Michelle Minton is a senior policy analyst at the Reason Foundation. Minton specializes in consumer policy, covering regulatory issues that include gambling, tobacco harm reduction, cannabis legalization, alcohol, and nutrition.

Minton has authored numerous studies, including topics like the effectiveness and unintended consequences of sin taxes and history of gambling regulation. Her analyses have been published and cited by nationally respected news outlets such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today as well as peer-reviewed journals. She regularly appears in news media to discuss the unintended effects of laws and rules designed to save adults from their own choices which, not only conflicts with the principle of individual liberty, but often the goals of public health.

Ms. Minton holds a Bachelor of Arts from the Johns Hopkins University and a Master of Science from the University of new England.

When not working, Minton engages in hands-on “research” in her areas of expertise by spending many hours playing poker, enjoying salty foods, and drinking delicious craft beers.

Riccardo Polosa is the Founder of the Center of Excellence for the acceleration of HArm Reduction (CoEHAR - University of Catania, Italy). Dr Polosa is Full Professor of Internal Medicine for the same University and Director of the Center for Smoking Prevention and Treatment at the University Hospital "Policlinico-V. Emanuele” of Catania. Dr. Polosa and the CoEHAR team of researchers conduct several high-profile clinical and behavioral research in the field of smoking-related diseases. According to a bibliometric analysis, Professor Polosa is considered the most productive scientist in the world in the field of electronic cigarette research.

Sudhanshu Patwardhan is a British-Indian, U.K.-licensed medical doctor, passionate about Healthtech innovation in cancer prevention. For the past two decades, he has lived and worked in three continents, doing senior roles in research, strategy and policy in the pharmaceutical and tobacco industries. 

In his early years in tobacco harm reduction, his team of clinical researchers and lab scientists set the foundations for the assessment of reduced-risk products, now accepted by regulators and the industry as the definitive approach for duty of care and regulatory compliance. At Nicoventures, a wholly owned subsidiary of BAT, he was instrumental in enabling the first e-cigarette company acquisition by a global tobacco business leading to a successful application for a medical license with the MHRA for an e-cigarette. In his policy role there, Patwardhan shaped the creation of a global key opinion leader network in consumer advocacy and public health champions. With the British Standards Institution (BSI), Patwardhan led the creation of the world’s first vaping product standards for safety and quality in 2015 and the BSI Online Age Checking specifications in collaboration with the Westminster-based Digital Policy Alliance in 2018. 

Patwardhan splits time between the U.K. and South Asia on projects that address the needs of the most disadvantaged tobacco users. In 2018, he co-founded the Centre for Health Research and Education that now has a team of over 100 medical and public health experts globally working in cancer prevention. Since 2021, Patwardhan is working with digital tech partners for innovating in oral cancer screening.