Ross Collins is a Director of James Ross Consulting, an independent global packaging consultancy operating from offices in the US, UK and Australia. Ross has over 30 years of experience in packaging engineering and project management and is a Fellow of the IOM3. He established James Ross Consulting in 1993 and since then the business has worked for major blue chip clients world-wide. Software development within James Ross Consulting began in response to a need for a next generation tool kit, one that would enable users to work collaboratively in developing solutions that were acceptable to marketing and optimized for the total supply chain. This provides clients with lowest cost / lowest footprint solutions for global markets.

What are you looking forward to explaining to the audience?

I am looking forward to explaining the genesis of PackDevPro and how the tool can drive better decision making within the NPD process and supply chain. This will provide direct cost and sustainability benefits for users and represents a new approach for packaging NPD.

Why did you decide to do a webinar with Business Review Webinars?

This is an exciting time for James Ross Consulting. We are officially launching our proprietary PackDevPro software and see this webinar as an opportunity to engage with the community it benefits.

PackDevPro has been critical to projects we have worked on in the past and we are looking forward to sharing its benefits as well our expertise with this community.

How did you get into the industry and what do you most enjoy about your role?

I am one of I am sure many ‘accidental technologists’ who ended up in packaging inadvertently. My original contact with packaging was in the pharma sector, where I worked on Quality Management initiatives – packaging seemed so much more interesting…the rest, as they say, is history. I think the most enjoyable aspect of the industry is the variety – packaging impacts marketing, design, cost, supply chain, engineering and operations – there is never a dull moment!

What are you hoping to achieve in the future in your personal and professional life?

Professionally, my goal is to establish James Ross Consulting as the leading force in packaging consultancy and to make it a benchmark for innovation and delivery of value for our clients. On a personal level, I am excited by the impact and potential that new technologies, like PackDevPro can bring to sustainability – we live in an age where technology is empowering and creating opportunities for us like never before.

Where is your favourite place in the world? I have been very lucky in being able travel a lot through working with James Ross Consulting – I have seen some great places and some not so great – but probably because of the travel home is always top of this list.

Join Ross Collins and James Ross Consulting discussing on their webinar entitled ‘Taking Control of Your Packaging‘ on 25th April.

Register Here!

Edward Benning is Smart Grid Integration & Security Lead for EMEA at OMNETRIC Group. 

In this role, he leads a team focused on helping utilities asses the IT/OT convergence opportunity, create strategic integration roadmaps and implement solutions to optimize performance and fine-tune control of an increasingly complex grid. 

Edward has almost 20 years’ experience in the utilities consulting industry across Europe. He has worked in all facets of the utility industry including customer care and billing, smart metering, grid balance settlement, grid operations and analytics. His key strength is breaking down complex IT/OT challenges into achievable steps that deliver results. He has extensive experience in initiating and executing large scale IT/OT transformations as well in small innovation programs. 

What are you looking forward to explaining to the audience?

IT/OT integration is incredibly important to the utilities industry but its not easy, and while most are actively engaged in it, there is a wide variation in the progress that’s been made to date. My colleague, Jon Longstaff, and I are looking forward to explaining to the audience how to overcome the security concerns, interoperability challenges and cultural barriers that so often prevent utilities from reaping the benefits that integration can bring.

Why did you decide to do a webinar with Business Review Webinars?

TSOs and DSOs know that IT/OT integration is foundational to operating the distribution business of tomorrow, however there are many who are still at the strategy stage and have not got any further. At OMNETRIC Group we want to share what we’re doing to make integration easier, and talk about how to get a roadmap in place to help integrate processes, technology and information.

How did you get into the industry and what do you most enjoy about your role?

I started out in the utilities consulting industry almost 20 years ago, and have worked across all facets including  customer care and billing, smart metering, grid balance settlement, grid operations and analytics. I joined OMNETRIC Group from Accenture at its inception in 2014.

I particularly enjoy breaking down complex IT/OT challenges into achievable steps that deliver results. I also enjoy working with my team to initiate and execute anything from large scale IT/OT transformations to small innovation programs.

What are you hoping to achieve in the future in your personal and professional life?

I grew up, from a business perspective, in an IT world at Accenture. Then, when I started at OMNETRIC Group 3 years ago, I met electrical engineers and security experts with a deep knowledge and understanding of the operational technology that runs the grid.

Working with these folks has instilled in me the belief that, in the context of the smarter grid, systems integration should be approached from an operational perspective, and I want to build a team and a business to do just that.

Where is your favourite place in the world?

Work means that I currently spend most of my time in the UK, Belgium and Netherlands… so I’m happy to go to hotter climates for holidays towards the East.

Join Edward Benning and Omnetric Group in their webinar “Let’s Get Real: IT/OT Integration Approaches” on 21st March at 1PM London/9AM New York.

Register Here!

Paul Randall is part of HP’s worldwide Brand Innovation Team. Working to support brands in their use of HP digital print technology to achieve efficiencies and cost savings as well as looking at how digital print can be a key innovation growth driver through delivering high impact consumer engagement campaigns. Having supported a number of projects that have used HP technology Paul has extensive knowledge of what it takes for digital print to be used successfully.

What do you hope the audience will learn from this webinar?

The webinar is a great opportunity to hear about yet another new way to bring product packaging to life with digital print and deliver “Brand Love” and experiential marketing via an instore experience. We hear so much about the changing consumer landscape that brands are faced with, and the evolving role of retail in delivering services to consumers as well as products. The technology we will showcase in this webinar provides an exciting solution to address these changes and ensure that brands can driver greater connections with their customer base.

What discussions do you look forward to having with the audience?

I truly hope this session drives excitement amongst the audience as they look at how this technology can apply to them and their businesses and their commercial goals moving forward.  Digital print is tool that enables brands to deliver on strategies through tactical packaging led activations that can truly bring success.

What do you enjoy most about your role?

What is most rewarding about my role is the way that we as HP are supporting brands to deliver projects that are ground-breaking. Every project we collaborate on always has a sense of new discovery and new achievements.

How did you get into the industry?

I got into this industry more by luck than judgement, as I’m sure is the case for so many people. But now here we are nearly 20 years further down the line and there is as much excitement and  innovation in the industry today as there was all those years ago.  I think we are fortunate to be involved in the packaging industry as it really offers so much scope for innovation and digital print technology is at the forefront of this. Whether it’s delivering cost efficiencies, or improving time to market or elevating the consumer experience and driving brand loyalty there is so much to admire about what our HP digital print technology brings to the industry.

Where is your favourite place in the world and why?

Ever since I was a child I’ve always been a sports fanatic. I spent so much of my early years involved in different sports and I now when i look back I realise those experiences have heavily influenced what I do nowadays and the people that I spend my time socialising with. So I probably relax and enjoy my time most when closest to a sports field of some description or another.  In recent times I’ve become heavily involved in coaching football to children and whilst maintaining the focus of 45 10 year old children on a sports field can be challenging is also delivers a great amount of personal satisfaction…… when things go right 🙂

Join Paul Randall and HP Inc. in their webinar “Delivering Customised Product Packaging Instore” in partnership with KOMDRUCK Printing Solutions on 5th April at 3PM London/10AM New York.

Register Now!

Ronan O’Brien – Head of Business Development – Malvern MicroCal

Ronan has a PhD in biophysical chemistry and spent many years working in the area of label-free interaction analysis, a discipline in which he has published widely, including contributions to a number of educational textbooks.  He carried out his post-doctoral research with Professor Julian Sturtevant at Yale University and Professor John Ladbury at University College London, before joining MicroCal as an applications expert in 2001.  Since then he has held a number of roles including Scientific Marketing Manager and Head of R&D before taking on his current position as Head of Business Development for the MicroCal product group at Malvern Instruments.

What do you hope the audience will learn from this webinar? I hope that attendees will be excited to find out how these new systems, designed specifically for those working in the biopharmaceutical industry – particularly in biocomparability and similarity, manufacturing support, QC, process development, formulation development and candidate selection – will answer some of their key challenges and give them better data more quickly and easily. The webinar will be of real use to those who have an interest in stability testing of protein-based biologics.

What discussions do you look forward to having with the audience?

I would like to discuss ‘next steps’ – what else can we do to improve our products?  What annoys them or causes a bottleneck?  What do they love, and what could they not manage without? For that, we need constructive criticism from the audience! I would also like to hear about general ‘pain’ points in the industry, so that we can focus our innovation efforts in the right places to provide solutions that give genuine value to our customers.

What do you enjoy most about your role?

I love getting out of the office and travelling all over the world so that I can meet our customers, see what they do and listen to what they have to say.  That shows me the real value of what we do here at Malvern.  I also love the excitement of collaborating with customers to develop new technologies or features, then bringing those products to market and seeing the difference that our innovations make and the answers they provide.

How did you get into the industry?

Through my post-doctoral work, where I studied protein-ligand interactions and protein stability using biophysical tools, including microcalorimetry (Differential Scanning Calorimetry and Isothermal Titration Calorimetry)!

Where is your favourite place in the world and why?

I have two – is that OK? The first is my garden, because it’s peaceful, has an outlook onto the woods and is full of wildlife, and also my wife is at her happiest when she is there. The second is the Emirates Stadium in London – the home of Arsenal Football Club – because I’m a soccer/football nut and Arsenal is my team.

Join Ronan on February 21st for the webinar ‘Turning up the heat on protein stability characterization’ Register Here for the 10AM London session or Register Here for the 6PM London session

Dr. M. Eileen Dolan, Professor of Medicine, is Chair of the Committee on Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacogenomics that includes a board-certified training program for clinical and post-doctoral fellows at the University of Chicago.

Within the University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center, she serves as the Associate Director for Education and is co-leader of the Clinical and Experimental Therapeutics Program. She directs a Graduate Training Program in Breast Cancer Disparities including creating a graduate level course in breast cancer disparities. She recently received the University of Chicago BSD Distinguished Faculty Educator/Mentor award.

Her research is highly translational. She has a broad background in pharmacology, and specific expertise in pharmacogenomics of anticancer agent toxicity using both clinical genome wide association studies and preclinical studies to identify and functionally validate genes/genetic variants associated with adverse drug reactions.

She has recently developed cell-based methods using induced pluripotent stem cells to study chemotherapy induced peripheral neuropathy. She has over 200 peer-reviewed, original research publications and approximately 60 editorials/book chapters/reviews. Since 2000, she has been continuously funded in the area of pharmacogenomics and previous to that, held continuous funding for her work in DNA repair.

What is your primary field of study, and what motivated you to pursue this?

I have always been interested in finding ways to increase effectiveness and decrease toxicity of chemotherapy.  My primary field of study is pharmacogenomics of anticancer agent toxicity.  I investigate why some individuals are more susceptible for adverse effects of chemotherapy. I identify genetic and non genetic factors that result in some patients living with devastating side effects following treatment with curative therapy for their cancer.  I also
build cell based models to functionally validate signals from clinical genome wide studies of chemotherapy induced peripheral neuropathy and for drug screening of potential agents to treat neuropathy.

What do you enjoy most about your role?

Working as an academic scientists is a great career because we enjoy independence and can build teams of scientists to answer important questions.  We also wear several hats—educating through teaching or mentoring or building programs, research, administration. As long as we can get funding, we can work on questions that we are most passionate about.  My job is never boring: I am constantly learning from colleagues, students, and our staff.

What is your favourite part of presenting to a live audience?

I enjoy getting feedback and questions because that helps to elevate my science and consider other perspectives.  Presentations are an opportunity to organize results.

What are you looking forward to explaining to the audience?

I am going to discuss how we are using stem cell derived neurons to functionally validate genes identified in genome wide studies of chemotherapy induced peripheral neuropathy.  I will describe advantages of this model over existing methods and how the model has potential to be used to identify new drugs to prevent/treat this devastating side effect of chemotherapy.

Where is your favorite place in the world and why?

My favorite place in the world is Chicago because the skyline is beautiful, there are great restaurants, strong universities, major sports teams and a lovely lake front. I also have a large family that lives in Chicago. Today it is –10 degrees in Chicago, so today my favorite place is San Diego.

Join Eileen  on January 25th for the webinar “iPSC-derived Cell Models for Oncology Applications”. Register here!