Theme: A World Imagined

The conference is a live event featuring high-profile speakers from all across the globe as they tell their stories of ‘A World Imagined’. From the head of the Oxford COVID Vaccine trials, to a YouTuber with over 1 million subscribers, to a young author and Ukrainian refugee, check out our individual speaker announcement posts on our social media pages for more information about all our speakers.

Oxford Town Hall
St. Aldate's
Oxford, Oxfordshire, OX1 3PG
United Kingdom

Andrew Pollard

Professor Pollard is Director of the Oxford Vaccine Group in the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Oxford and an honorary consultant paediatrician at Oxford Children’s Hospital, and a Fellow of St Cross College. He received a knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2021 for services to Public Health, especially in the pandemic. Professor Pollard obtained his medical degree at St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical School, University of London, in 1989 and trained in Paediatrics at Birmingham Children’s Hospital specialising in Paediatric Infectious Diseases at St Mary’s Hospital, London, and at British Columbia Children’s Hospital, Vancouver, Canada. He obtained his PhD at St Mary’s Hospital in 1999 studying immunity to Neisseria meningitidis in children and proceeded to work on anti-bacterial innate immune responses in children in Canada before returning to his current position at the University of Oxford in 2001. At Oxford Children’s Hospital he led the paediatric infectious disease clinical service 2001-2021 and remains a member of the consultant team. He was Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Paediatrics 2012-2020 and Vice-Master of St Cross College, Oxford, 2017-2021. He chairs the UK Department of Health and Social Care’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (since 2013), was a member of WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (2016-2022), and chaired the European Medicines Agency scientific advisory group on vaccines (2012–2020). He has been a member of the British Commission on Human Medicines' Clinical Trials, Biologicals and Vaccines expert advisory group since 2013. He chaired the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) meningitis guidelines development group (2006-2010), the NICE topic expert group developing quality standards for management of meningitis and meningococcal septicaemia (2011-2013). He previously chaired the scientific panel of the Spencer Dayman Meningitis Laboratories Charitable Trust (2002-2006) and was a member of the scientific committee of the Meningitis Research Foundation (2009-2014) and is currently chair of trustees of the Knoop Trust and a trustee of the Jenner Vaccine Foundation and the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra. He is director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, a research team at Oxford University with 150 research staff. His research includes the design, development and clinical evaluation of vaccines including those for typhoid, meningococcus, Haemophilus influenzae type b, pneumococcus, plague, pertussis, influenza, rabies, coronavirus and Ebola, and leads studies using a human challenge model of paratyphoid and typhoid. He runs surveillance for invasive bacterial diseases and studies the impact of pneumococcal vaccines in children in Nepal and leads a project on burden and transmission of typhoid in Nepal, Bangladesh and Malawi, and co-leads typhoid vaccine impact studies at these sites. He was the chief investigator for the clinical trials of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in 2020 in 24,000 participants in UK, South Africa and Brazil, which led to authorisation of the vaccine for use in more than 180 countries with over 3 billion doses distributed and award of the Copley Medal by the Royal Society in 2022. He has supervised 48 PhD students and his publications includes over 600 manuscripts and books on various topics in paediatrics and infectious diseases. He received the “Science Honor and Truth Award” of the Instituto de Patologia en la Altura in La Paz, Bolivia in 2002, the Bill Marshall Award of the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Disease (ESPID) in 2013, the ESPID Distinguished Award for Education and Communication in 2015, the Rosén von Rosenstein medal in 2019 awarded by the Swedish Paediatric Society and the Swedish Society of Medicine, and the James Spence Medal from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health in 2022. He was elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2016. He received the Oxford University Vice Chancellor’s Innovation Award in 2020 for his work on typhoid vaccines and he and the COVID19 vaccine team received a 2022 award. He made the first British ascent of Jaonli (6632m) in 1988 and Chamlang in 1991 (7309m) and was the Deputy leader of the successful 1994 British Medical Everest Expedition.

Angus Fletcher

Angus Fletcher is Professor of Story Science at Ohio State’s Project Narrative. His research explores why children are more creative than computer AI—and how to use literature, art, and stories to increase innovation, resilience, and joy. His research partners include teams from US Special Operations, UPenn Wharton, Johns Hopkins School of Education, USC Neuroscience, and Ohio State Medical School. Hi work has been called "mind-blowing" by Malcolm Gladwell and "life-changing" by Brene Brown.

Carol Ibe

Carol Ibe is the president and founder of JR Biotek Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to upskilling and empowering African agricultural scientists to develop high-impact research projects aimed at addressing food insecurity in African countries. Carol completed her PhD in Plant Sciences from the University of Cambridge (as a Gates scholar) and her postdoctoral research at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, UK. Her PhD and postdoctoral research focused on two staple cereals, rice and wheat, and how their interactions with beneficial and harmful fungi may be optimized for practical agricultural applications. Although Carol enjoyed working on these impactful projects, she has become increasingly restless about the looming hunger and malnutrition problems affecting millions of people in Africa. Carol now devotes her time, experience and passion towards developing practical agri-tech solutions to enable African scientists to advance research on the genetic improvement of understudied indigenous crops, which hold great promise for closing the hunger and malnutrition gaps in Africa. Carol’s outstanding research, exemplary leadership and absolute commitment to improving lives and systems has led to several awards including the 2019 Bill Gates Sr. Prize and the University of Cambridge’s Society for the Application of Research Awards (CSAR).

Charis Jo

Charis Jo is a DPhil (PhD) student at the University of Oxford where she is the Graduate Research and Teaching Scholar in Classics at Oriel College. Her academic research focuses on ancient theories of what language is and does: she is especially curious about speech acts, meaning, verbal moods, and the relationship between grammar and psychology. She founded the Oxford Latinitas Project in 2018 which has since become two organizations, the Oxford Ancient Languages Society (https://www.oxfordancientlanguages.com/) and Oxford Latinitas (https://www.oxfordlatinitas.org/), for which she has served as director of vision, academic director, and lead teacher, and for which she now organizes reading groups for school-age girls around the world. She is passionate about philosophy, teaching, mental health, and learning to speak dead languages.

Ivan Shaw

Ivan was born Ivan Buchwald in February 1939 in Novi Sad, in former Yugoslavia (now Serbia). He lived in an apartment in the city centre with his parents, Gertrude and Andor and was an only child. His father owned an electrical store and the family led a comfortable, middle class life. Ivan grew up speaking Serbo-Croat, Hungarian and German depending on who he was talking with and remembers a happy childhood playing with his parents, with summers spent swimming in the Danube river. In May 1944, Ivan’s life changed dramatically. Until that point, the Hungarians (who had taken over the area in 1941) had not put many restrictions in place for Jewish people, but in May 1944 the Germans began rounding up Jews and deportations began. The Jews of Novi Sad were told to go to an assembly point – Ivan’s mother had been summoned to go but his father was not because he was only half Jewish. His sisters begged him to stay, but he could not abandon his wife, and thinking that Ivan would be safe with his family, he left on the transports with her. Ivan was cared for by one of his fathers’ sisters, until his concealment was given away by a neighbour. He was taken away by the Gestapo to a prison cell where he stayed overnight, alone at just 5 years old. From here, he was taken by lorry to a transit camp where he was found by friends and family also there, and they looked after him. After about 10 days, all the inmates of the camp were marched to Novi Sad train station to be transported to a further camp. Another of Ivan’s aunts had been following his movements from outside and used the opportunity to snatch him from the line and hide him in a forest before taking him to her home and concealing him there. In this way, he survived until the end of the war. Soon after the war ended Ivan learned that both his parents had died in camps – his father in Buchenwald and his mother in Bergen Belsen just days after liberation. It was his mother’s wish that he should go to live with her sister in England should they not survive, and so in 1947, Ivan was taken to live with his Aunt and Uncle in Amersham. Ivan learned English quickly and adapted to a new life in England easily though he remains firmly connected to his Serbian roots and family. He gained a degree in Textile Engineering and worked for Marks & Spencer for 30 years before starting his own business. He married Eileen in 1965 – they live in London and have 3 children and 6 grandchildren.

Lin Yue

Lin is a senior executive working in a major investment bank in London. Over the last 10 years she has lead business growth and relationships with some of the largest institutional investors in the UK. Lin speaks frequently on the intersection of business, diversity and behavioural science. She has won multiple awards for her work including HERoes 100 Women Future Leaders by Yahoo Finance for four consecutive years, a finalist for Asian Women of Achievement and Women in Finance Award as an advocate in 2021. She is one of 50 Most Inspirational Women in the City of London by Brummell, a top Ethnic Minority Future Leader by EMpower, and the winner of the “Excellence in Banking” award at the Chinese Business Leaders Awards. Lin is a graduate of experimental psychology from Oxford University focusing on behavioral finance.

Max Fosh

Hi, my name is Max Fosh and I am a YouTuber. Well, that is what I am to everyone apart from my immediate family. They would probably class me as unemployed. I have 1.4million subscribers on my channel and my videos have accrued over 350million views worldwide. I started making videos during my final year at University. It started a series called StreetSmart in which I interviewed students on nights out. It was ‘breathtakingly fresh content’ which cemented me as a ‘visionary pioneer’ of the man-on-the-street genre (these could be real quotes, I’m not sure). The real reason I started my own series was mainly because the Uni TV channel already had enough presenters on their show, so I started my own. Following the first episode filmed in October 2017, I relentlessly made StreetSmart episodes and I made approximately 25 episodes before leaving Uni. After graduating, I took StreetSmart on tour round 14 UK Universities. Following this, I worked in a bar for 5 months while working on the channel. I met two YouTubers called Zac and Jay during this time, and in February 2018 we made a video together which went truly viral; I gained 50,000 subscribers virtually overnight. Since then, I have grown steadily and have the greatest job in the world. Being professionally silly.

Michael Barton

Michael Barton is an international speaker on autism and neurodiversity. Having published three books on the topic (and selling over 15,000 copies to date) Michael has focused on educating audiences around the world on the positive aspects of being autistic. He has been invited to speak to a wide range of audiences, from global pharmaceutical companies to charities and Primary Schools! Accomplished in his professional career as a Data Analyst in the automotive industry, while not working full time Michael is an experienced musician, a black belt in judo and a keen rock climber. www.MichaelBarton.org.uk

Olivia Aminatta Jobe

Student

Olivia Aminatta Jobe was born and raised in America by a Black American mother and a Gambian father. She is currently earning a master’s degree in sociology at the University of Oxford. Olivia is a contemporary Griot, collecting the histories and stories of her family members through audio. In 2021, she released the first episode of her podcast, The Griot Podcast for the NPR Podcast Challenge: College Edition. The episode was about her Grandmother’s life story and upbringing in a segregated America. The project inspired her to take a deep dive into her family history using archival methods and online databases.

Tomáš Kočiský

Tomáš is a researcher in artificial intelligence with particular focus on natural language, and he works as a Staff Research Scientist in the Language team at DeepMind. Tomáš works on teaching agents how to understand language, how to reason about the knowledge we communicate using it, and on evaluating these abilities and their limitations. Tomáš received his DPhil in Computer Science from University of Oxford.

Yang Liu

Yang is the founder and CEO of JustWears - a direct to consumer material science company on the mission to bring biodegradable natural materials and ergonomic designs into everyday men's life, starting from creating the most comfortable underwear for men. From starting in her living room, Yang has built JustWears into a multi-million pound business in just 3 years, before she raised over £3m from leading consumer VCs and angel investors. Their award-winning Phallus for your Palace® underwear was featured on BBC Dragons' Den, This Morning, Forbes, Evening Standard etc. Yang came to the UK at 23 with nothing but her broken English. She was recently featured on the cover of Forbes 30Under30 Europe for the contribution to sustainability and social impact. She was also awarded as "Highly Commended Entrepreneur" by NatWest Asian Women of Achievement Awards and was recognized as 'Exceptional Talents" by UK Home Office etc.

Yeva Skalietska

Yeva Skalietska is a 12-year-old Ukrainian girl who grew up living with her granny in Kharkiv, near the Russian border. She loves learning languages, bowling, playing the piano and painting. Yeva wrote a diary of her experiences of fleeing war in Ukraine. She now lives in Dublin, Ireland where she has made new friends and had a go at Irish dancing, but is always missing home.