Post-Doctoral Researcher, Babraham Institute

Chief Marketing Officer, Innovation Forum

Dr Julian Peat is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Babraham Institute, and the Chief Marketing Officer of the Innovation Forum. He is passionate about the power of innovative science to ‘change the rules’ – to drive technical, medical and economic advance – and believes that this is best achieved by a synergy of academic, industry and governmental resources.

In 2012, Julian co-founded the Innovation Forum, a student-led initiative that seeks to foster interaction between these sectors and connect innovative mind across disciplines. From its origins at the University of Cambridge, the Forum has rapidly expanded across the UK and internationally and now counts branches in six countries. This venture also led to the founding of Cambridge Squared, a technology consultancy that takes a novel crowd-sourcing approach to link academic excellence with commercial need.

Julian recently completed a PhD at the University of Cambridge, where he looked at how DNA modifications cause cells to lose plasticity during development, and how this can be reversed to generate stem cells for therapy. This research resulted in a patent, an industrial partnership and the award of a commercialisation grant. He continues to work as a postdoctoral researcher in this field.

Julian hails from New Zealand, where he obtained a degree in biotechnology with a focus on market translation of innovative science.