Professor Simon Ward is the Sêr Cymru Professor in Translational Drug Discovery and Director of the Medicines Discovery Institute at Cardiff University. He has wide ranging experience of drug discovery in companies & academia (GlaxoSmithKline, BioCrea, Knoll Pharmaceuticals, Vernalis, Chiroscience, University of Sussex, Cardiff University) and specialist experience of discovering and developing drugs against ion channel targets. He has led multidisciplinary project teams & medicinal chemistry groups from early stages through to clinical studies, bringing multiple molecules into clinical development for a wide range of diseases.