Dr Anne Lane started her career as a geneticist and completed a PhD and British Heart Foundation Junior Fellowship at UCL before teaching and researching at Harvard University and Medical School in the US. This was at a time when Genentech, Biogen and Millenium were making the headlines, motivating her to move to the business world in 1997, working for RTP Pharma Inc in Montreal, Canada and as a business consultant for the US Technology Transfer Centre and Veterans’ Administration, translating scientific research into medical solutions.

Anne moved into university technology transfer at her alma mater UCL in 2000. She helped to move UCL’s commercialisation activities into a wholly-owned subsidiary, establishing UCL Business Ltd in 2006, and has been CEO since 2019. She worked on the establishment of the two UCL Technology Funds raising in excess of £120m which has supported many spinout businesses formed by UCL academics to commercialise their research and technologies.

These businesses have raised almost £3 billion in external investment, 5 have listed on NASDAQ and their world-changing impacts include a potentially curative ‘one-shot’ lifetime treatment for haemophilia A, AI-led climate change solutions, and revolutionary diagnostic technologies minimising breast cancer surgery. Anne has also led UCLB’s work to create pioneering businesses driving social change, from new approaches to help children eat more healthily to upcycling mining waste to create paint products for use in fine art and interior design.

Anne acts as board director on several of UCLB’s spinout companies, including UCL Consultants Ltd, and is a member of the Government Office for Technology Transfer (GOTT) Advisory Board.

Anne holds a BSc in Applied Biochemistry from Liverpool John Moores University, a PhD in medicine from UCL and an Executive MBA from Molson Business School, Montreal, Canada.