NEPIC will be exhibiting at this year’s Making Pharmaceuticals conference, 21-22 April 2026 at The Coventry Building Society Arena.
Find us on stand 727 and catch up with our team members:
– Joanne Smith, CEO
– Karen Woodland, Senior Account Manager
– Daniel Shenton, Pharmaceutical Account Manager
We are also pleased to announce that we will be hosting a panel session.
Our panel speakers include:
About our speakers:
Joanne Smith, CEO, NEPIC
Joanne will be chairing our panel session.
Joanne joined NEPIC as business development director in 2020, before becoming CEO and NEPIC’s first female leader in 2024. She has spent over 25 years working within North East England across the public, private and voluntary sectors.
Joanne is an experienced business specialist with strengths in building relationships developed from her previous roles working for the North East Chamber of Commerce and Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council.
Working with and influencing North East businesses for many decades made Joanne the perfect fit to lead our organisation. Recognised as one of the region’s best connected individuals, she was named in the North East’s Most Influential 500.
Sam Brogan, Director, Global Research and Development, Sterling Pharma Solutions
Sam was educated at the University of Cambridge, graduating with MSci in Natural Sciences, before earning a PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University of Edinburgh. She started her career at Sterling in 2012 as a Development Chemist and later Senior Scientist within the laboratory.
In 2019, she moved into her first management role as a Lab Project Manager and R&D Group Leader. After a 3-month secondment at Sterling’s site in North Carolina, USA, Sam returned to the UK to become Head of Research and Development at the Cramlington site. In 2024, she took up her current role as Director, Global Research and Development, in which she is responsible for the alignment and integration of Sterling’s R&D teams and services across the six sites.
Catherine Bladen, Chief Scientific Officer, Vector Laboratories
Catherine leads the technical development and innovation teams at Vector Laboratories, Inc. She has more than 25 years of experience in biochemistry research (specifically protein identification, purification, and characterization) both in the UK and the USA. She completed her PhD in 2001 in the Cancer Research Unit at Newcastle University, studying novel proteins involved in p53 independent cancer pathways.
Steve Byard, Principal Research Fellow, Arcinova
Steve has spent more than 37 years working in the pharmaceutical industry for major global R&D organisations, with extended periods in the USA, and is currently a Principal Research Fellow at Arcinova’s Alnwick site in the UK.
Steve has had an active involvement in numerous advisory panels for academic research programmes, provided industrial consultancy, directed research for postgraduate students and served as peer reviewer for international journals. Since 2019 he has held an honorary professorship in the Physics Department at the University of Warwick, he has a Research Fellowship at the University of Leeds and is an Associate Lecturer at the University of Northumbria.
As a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Steve held the position of Secretary for the NMR Discussion Group for 13 years, chaired the Chemists’ Community Fund Committee for 4 years and is presently an elected Trustee for the RSC. He is a member of the Formulation Forum Committee of the Society of Chemical Industry, and has recently been appointed as a Director of North East Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC).