Dr Robert Hayes was Head of Biologics at multinational biopharmaceutical company Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN) and was responsible for the leadership, strategic direction and operational management of the company’s biologics preclinical discovery and biotherapeutics pipeline. This included bioreagent generation, large molecule lead identification, biologics optimization, and the transition to upstream process development and manufacturing. Prior to Amgen, Dr Hayes spent seven years as vice president & venture leader of a biotech company within Janssen R&D that focused on developing and exploiting small alternative scaffold proteins. He was also senior director of Protein Engineering at
Johnson and Johnson, one of the world's largest healthcare companies, for over three years. With over 20 years’ experience in biotech start-ups and large pharmaceutical companies, Dr Hayes also has significant experience in forming partnerships between biotech companies and university partners to advance the development and application of novel therapeutic platforms. Dr Hayes holds a PhD from Imperial College London, where he was the Royal College of Science Scholar and a Royal Society University Research Fellow. He also completed postdoctoral research at Imperial and University California at Berkeley.