With a distinguished career in the pharmaceutical industry as well as academia, Dr. Knowles has repeatedly earned the highest levels of recognition. His past roles and responsibilities include being a member of the Roche Corporate Executive Committee and President of Group Research with oversight of the Roche Group R&D. As part of this role, as a board member of Genentech and Chugai, Roche Group Companies have created a number of highly effective, valuable therapies for patients defined by state-of-the-art molecular diagnostics. Moreover, Dr. Knowles holds distinguished faculty positions at numerous first-class institutions, including the University of Oxford, University of Helsinki, the Swiss EPFL, and the University of Basel.

Notably, Dr. Knowles took on a signature role as the Chairman of the Research Directors’ Group of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industry Associations. He was the founding Chairman of the Board and central to the establishment of the Innovative Medicines Initiative, a unique public-private partnership between 28 international pharmaceutical companies and the European Commission with participation of over 200 academic institutions in Europe. Beyond that, he has demonstrated particular interest in sculpting promising younger companies, such as Immunocore Ltd. and Adaptimmune Ltd., at both of which he was Chairman of the Board for some years.