patrons

Professor Dame Sally Davies is the 39th Master of Trinity College. She was the Chief Medical Officer for England and Chief Medical Advisor to the UK Government from 2010 - 2019. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Academy of Medical Sciences. In the 2020 New Year Honours, she was appointed Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, for services to public health and research. 

 Professor Dame Donna Kinnair is the Chief Executive and General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing.  Working with the RCN Council and the Executive Team Donna is responsible for delivering the RCN's strategic and operational plans. Donna joined the RCN as Head of Nursing in 2015, she was then promoted and joined the RCN Executive Team to Director of Nursing, Policy and Practice in 2016, where her key role is to work with UK-wide RCN staff to drive and implement the future RCN professional nursing, policy and practice strategy.

Prior to joining the RCN Donna held various roles including Clinical Director of Emergency Medicine; Executive Director of Nursing and Director of Commissioning. Donna advised the PM’s Commission on the future of Nursing and Midwifery in 2010 and served as nurse/child health assessor to the Victoria Climbié Inquiry.  

  Sir Paul Nurse is a geneticist and cell biologist who has worked on how the eukaryotic cell cycle is controlled.  His major work has been on the cyclin dependent protein kinases and how they regulate cell reproduction. He is Director of the Francis Crick Institute in London, and has served as President of the Royal Society, Chief Executive of Cancer Research UK and President of Rockefeller University.  He shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and has received the Albert Lasker Award, the Gairdner Award, the Louis Jeantet Prize and the Royal Society's Royal and Copley Medals.  He was knighted by The Queen in 1999, received the Legion d'honneur in 2003 from France, and the Order of the Rising Sun in 2018 from Japan.  He served for 15 years on the Council of Science and Technology, advising the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and is presently a Chief Scientific Advisor for the European Union and a trustee of the British Museum. Paul flies gliders and vintage aeroplanes and has been a qualified bush pilot.  He also likes the theatre, hill-walking, going to museums and art galleries, and running very slowly.

Sir Gregory Winter was Master of Trinity College from 2012 to 2019, previously a Fellow and member of the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge. He is a scientist, inventor and entrepreneur. He is a pioneer of the science of protein engineering, and in particular of technologies for making pharmaceutical antibodies. Such antibodies have proved useful for treatment of cancer and immune disorders, and now comprise many of the world’s top selling pharmaceutical drugs. In order to see his technologies applied, Sir Gregory founded three successful biotechnology companies - Cambridge Antibody Technology and Domantis (both acquired in 2006 by AstraZeneca and GSK respectively), and most recently Bicycle Therapeutics, which is developing bicyclic peptides with chemical warheads for treatment of cancer.  (Photo by Aga Mackaj)