The flagship conference and exhibition for the life sciences sector in Wales, BioWales 2014, opens in Cardiff today.
To date, the number of delegates has increased by more than 20 per cent to 550, and more than 500 business partnering meetings have been confirmed, compared to 340 at last year’s event.
The Wales Millennium Centre has been taken over for the BioWales conference, with the exhibition space extending across the whole of the ground floor.
The two-day event (March 6-7) is supported by some of the biggest names in the sector and sponsors include Siemens, which has a facility in north Wales, GlaxoSmithKline, which recently opened an office in Cardiff and Johnson & Johnson, which will have a base in the Life Sciences Hub in Cardiff.
Johnson & Johnson is also running a nurturing talent workshop chaired by Johan Verbeeck of Johnson & Johnson Innovation Centre London. The Master Class will highlight career opportunities in the sector for highly talented students in Welsh Universities and has attracted the biggest ever student delegation to attend BioWales.
The Arthurian Life Sciences board, chaired by Prof Sir Chris Evans, will be staging a ‘Dragon’s Den’ type session during the conference to encourage more companies to apply for funding via the £100 million Wales Life Sciences Investment Fund.
Economy Minister Edwina Hart said: “BioWales provides a superb platform to promote the expertise in Wales across the whole spectrum of the life sciences sector ranging from university research departments to highly innovative companies.
“It provides a great opportunity to network, to listen to some of the celebrated speakers, to learn from them and to explore new business opportunities through the partnering events.
“The line-up of speakers covering a wide range of subject areas is particularly impressive and I am pleased to see BioWales is growing in stature every year and is one of the key events on the UK bioscience calendar. It is also pleasing that a number of global names in the sector with operations in Wales are also sponsoring and participating in BioWales.”
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