The UK’s largest Clinical Research Facility (CRF), Manchester, has elected Mark Samuels to its Governance Board. Mark is Chief Business and Strategy Officer at the Medicines Discovery Catapult. He was elected to the Board on account of his commercial expertise spanning the drug discovery, diagnostics and medical technologies industries, as well as Whitehall. He was a founding Strategy Board member of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) which is responsible for NHS research across England with an annual budget of over £1bn. Previously Mark also headed business development for Roche’s UK Diagnostics Division, co-chaired the establishment of NICE’s programme to evaluate diagnostics, and contributed to the Prime Minister’s strategy for life sciences.