Professor Ryan F. Donnelly holds the Chair in Pharmaceutical Technology in the School of Pharmacy at Queen's University Belfast. A registered Pharmacist, his research is centred on design and physicochemical characterisation of advanced polymeric drug delivery systems for transdermal and topical drug delivery, with a strong emphasis on improving patient outcomes. He is currently developing a range of novel microneedle technologies through independent research, but also in collaboration with several major pharma partners. He has obtained substantial Research Councils UK, charity and industrial funding and authored over 500 peer‐reviewed publications, including four patent applications, four textbooks, 23 book chapters and more than 150 full papers. He has been an invited speaker at numerous national and international conferences. Professor Donnelly is Editor‐in‐Chief of Recent Patents on Drug Delivery & Formulation and a member of the Editorial Advisory Boards of several leading pharmaceutical science journals. He won the Controlled Release Society's Young Investigator Award in 2016, BBSRC Innovator of the Year and the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists Pharmaceutical Research Meritorious Manuscript Award in 2013, the GSK Emerging Scientist Award in 2012 and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's Science Award (2011).

Dr Thakur Raghu Raj Singh is Senior Lecturer in Pharmaceutics in the School of Pharmacy at Queen's University Belfast. He obtained his PhD in Drug Delivery from the School of Pharmacy at Queen's in 2009, his MSc in Pharmaceutical Sciences from University Science Malaysia in 2006 and his BPharm from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, India in 2002. Dr Thakur's research interests are in the design and physicochemical characterisation of advanced polymeric drug delivery systems for ocular, transdermal and topical applications. In particular, his current research involves fabrication and design of novel long‐acting injectable and implantable drug delivery systems for treating back‐of‐the‐eye disorders. Dr Thakur's ocular drug delivery research has led to formation of a university spinout company, Re‐vana Therapeutics Ltd, for which he is the Co‐founder and Chief Scientific Officer. He has authored over 140 scientific publications, including one patent, 46 peer‐reviewed research papers, eight book chapters and three textbooks and has been an invited speaker at a number of national and international meetings. He is currently an Editorial Board member of the Journal of Pharmacy & Pharmacology, Chronicles of Pharmacy and Science Domain International, and acts as a scientific advisor to The Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, in addition to regularly acting as a reviewer for many other international scientific journals.

Dr Eneko Larrañeta works as Lecturer in Pharmaceutical Sciences in the School of Pharmacy at Queen's University Belfast. His main fields of expertise are drug delivery and pharmaceutical materials. During the last five years, he has been working on several projects to develop more efficient drug delivery systems for the oral and transdermal routes. For this purpose, he worked on the development of advanced systems, such as nanoparticles and microneedles. He worked on the development of nanoparticles for oral delivery of difficult‐to‐deliver drugs and nutraceuticals at the University of Navarra (Spain) under the supervision of Professor Juan Manuel Irache, an internationally renowned expert on mucosal drug delivery. In addition to oral drug delivery, he has done extensive work on microneedle‐mediated transdermal drug delivery with Professor Donnelly's Group. He has worked on a range of projects funded by the European 7th Framework Programme and the UK's Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council. Moreover, he has also worked on projects sponsored by global not‐for‐profit organisations, as well as the pharmaceutical and cosmeceutical industry. Using his previous research experience, the main objective of his current research is to develop materials that can be easily transferred to industry for ultimate patient benefit. He has published 20 scientific articles in indexed journals and has been co‐author of two book chapters.

Dr Maelíosa T.C. McCrudden is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Pharmacy at Queen's University Belfast. Having received her PhD from Queen's in 2008, she first carried out postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Dr Fionnuala Lundy, determining the roles of specific innate host peptides in wound healing and defence mechanisms in the oral cavity. She then moved her research focus to the field of pharmaceutical sciences and has, since 2012, worked in the Microneedles Research Group of Professor Donnelly. Her research has centred on transdermal delivery of drugs and intradermal vaccine administration using a range of novel microneedle systems. She has worked on Research Council and pharmaceutical industry funded projects and has most recently worked with the international not‐for‐profit organisation, PATH, to deliver an anti‐HIV drug in a sustained fashion. Over and above these research interests, she is passionately committed to science communication and was recognised nationally for her work by receipt of both the Mendel Gold Medal and the Eric Wharton Medal at the Westminster SET for Britain awards in 2016. Dr McCrudden has published 25 articles in peer‐reviewed journals, in addition to seven review articles and one book chapter. She is a regular invited speaker at both national and international conferences.