Lord Smith has been the Master of Pembroke since 2015 and stepped down at the end of July 2025. He is a former Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, and later Chairman of the Environment Agency.

Born in 1951, Lord Smith was educated in Edinburgh and then Pembroke College, Cambridge, achieving a double first in English (and later a PhD on Wordsworth and Coleridge) and was also a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard.

He began his political career as a Labour Councillor for the London Borough of Islington, becoming MP for Islington South and Finsbury in 1983. In 1992 he joined the Shadow Cabinet and held a number of frontbench posts before Labour came to power in 1997. He served as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport until 2001 when he returned to the back benches, standing down from the Commons in 2005. Immediately afterwards he was made a life peer.

He chaired the Environment Agency from 2008 to 2014; from 2007 to 2017 he was also Chairman of the Advertising Standards Authority.

Professor Jean Abraham is Professor of Precision Breast Cancer Medicine and Honorary Consultant in Medical Oncology at the University of Cambridge. She co-leads the Integrated Cancer Medicine (ICM) theme in the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre, with oversight of the Cancer Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory, ICM Clinical Trials and Tissue Bank Rapid Response Team.  

Jean is also deputy theme lead for Cancer at the Cambridge NIHR Biomedical Research Campus. She is part of the national NIHR Clinical Studies Group for Breast Cancer and part of the NCRI Working Party for Early Disease. She is Chief Investigator of PARTNER a neoadjuvant BRCA positive and triple negative early breast cancer trial investigating the benefit of adding novel targeted agents to standard chemotherapy. In addition, she is Co-Chief Investigator of the Personalised Breast Cancer Program, a real-world whole genome sequencing (DNA) and RNA sequencing project for women with all-stages of breast cancer.  

She graduated from the University of Liverpool Medical School and trained in Internal Medicine and Oncology at the University of Cambridge. She was awarded a National CRUK PhD Fellowship, receiving her PhD in Breast Cancer Pharmacogenetics from the University of Cambridge (2011). In 2017 she was awarded the “BioBeat Award for Top 50 Females in UK BioBusiness and Healthcare” and a Royal Society Award to enable closer links between academics/scientists and policy makers.  

Professor Grant Stewart was trained as an academic surgeon at the University of Edinburgh becoming Senior Lecturer and Group Leader of the Edinburgh Urological Cancer Group in 2013. In 2015, he moved to Cambridge where, in 2020, he became Professor of Surgical Oncology and has a focus on developing and promoting surgery related clinical trials and translational research. As a urological surgeon, Grant has a specific interest in optimising management of patients with initially localised renal cancer, by the development of early detection and optimal peri-surgical management.

In 2016 Grant developed the robotic kidney surgery programme in Cambridge and led the development of the multi-speciality robotic surgery programme which commenced in 2023. Grant is Director of the CRUK Cambridge Centre Urological Malignancies Virtual Institute and Integrated Cancer Medicine Program. He is passionate about clinical and academic training and Director of the Academic Clinical Fellow Programme in Cambridge, one of the UK’s largest ACF programme. He is Deputy Editor of The Surgeon and Section Editor of British Journal of Urology International. Grant is also a trustee of Kidney Cancer UK, Clinical Director of the National Kidney Cancer Audit, Clinical lead for the NICE Kidney Cancer Guideline and Chair of the Getting It Right First Time Kidney Cancer Pathway.

Dr Toh Han Chong is Deputy CEO (Strategic Partnerships), National Cancer Centre Singapore and Professor at Duke NUS Medical School. He completed the International Baccalaureate at Lester B Pearson College, British Columbia, Canada, on a United World College scholarship, obtained his BSc (Intercalated) from the University of London in ‘Infection and Immunity’ and his medical degree from the University of Cambridge, UK. His oncology and translational research fellowships were at the Singapore General Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School and at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston Texas, USA. Dr Toh is an alumnus of the Harvard Business School General Management Program. He received the National Senior Clinician Scientist Award in 2017, National Medical Excellence Award (NMEA) in 2018 and the NMRC STaR Award in 2022. Dr Toh is co-founder of the Asia-Pacific Gastrointestinal Cancer Summit (APGCS). He is European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Scientific Faculty for Cancer Immunology & Immunotherapy and chair of Investigational Immunotherapy at ESMO Annual Congress 2026 in Madrid, Spain. Dr Toh has published over 165 peer review journal papers. As co-founder of a clinical stage startup, he and Team NeoTILa won 1st prize (global health category) and overall 3rd prize at the 2024 Wolfson Entrepreneurship Competition, Cambridge University.

Dr. Valerie Yang is a Senior Medical Oncologist at OncoCare Cancer Centre. She focuses on managing complex cancers, including rare cancers, sarcomas, skin cancers, melanomas, lymphomas, but also common cancers and general oncology.

Dr. Yang is also jointly appointed as Group Leader of the Translational Precision Oncology Laboratory at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB), Adjunct Principal Investigator at the Bioinformatics Institute, A*STAR, Adjunct Assistant Professor at Duke-NUS Medical School and Visiting Consultant at the National Cancer Centre Singapore, where her translational research bridges real-world data, advanced genomic and spatial technologies, patient-derived models and functional precision oncology to bring effective treatments to patients. She is also on the steering committee of the Asian Clinical Trials Network for Cancers (ATLAS) Sarcoma and Rare Cancer team where she coordinates and designs clinical trials, as well as real-world data and multi-omic studies across Asia. 

Dr Yang has presently authored over 60 publications and book chapters. A graduate of the MB/PhD programme at the University of Cambridge, Dr. Yang has won several awards, including the First Prize in open competition across Cambridge University’s PhD candidates in Biological Sciences and the Sylvia Lawler Prize from the Royal Society of Medicine. She is also a member of a three-person international scholar selection panel for the Gates Cambridge Trust for Biological Sciences. She is a National Science Scholar under Singapore’s A*STAR scholarship program. Her clinical training in Internal Medicine and Medical Oncology was completed in Singapore, at the National University Hospital (NUH) and the National Cancer Centre Singapore (NCCS).

Dr. Yang has received numerous accolades, including the prestigious National Medical Research Council (NMRC) Transition Award as an Associate Consultant and a 25-million-dollar Open Fund Large Collaborative Grant as Theme Principal Investigator. Internationally, she holds key roles in global networks for rare cancers and sarcomas, representing Singapore in clinical trials and research collaborations both academic and with industry. She also co-chairs the biennial Singapore Sarcoma & Skin Cancers Symposium. She has also taught at National University of Singapore (NUS), Duke-NUS Medical School and has mentored over 30 students ranging from science and medical students to Master’s and PhD students.

She is also a strong advocate for several patient support groups. She has received named referrals especially for rare cancers and sarcomas from all over the world, including Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Japan, Australia, the United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Poland, South Africa and Inner Mongolia.