Paul Young is Professor of Commercialisation at Macquarie Business School and Professor of Respiratory Technology at the Woolcock Medical Research Institute; the no 1 Medical Research Institute for Respiratory and Sleep disease research globally. Paul has over 25 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical and higher education sectors and specializes in commercialization, entrepreneurship, pharmaceutical, MedTech and deep-tech business creation. Paul joined Macquarie School of Marketing in 2021. Prior to this, Paul has held academic roles as the Inaugural Chair of commercialization at the University of Sydney and Deputy Exec Director of the Woolcock Institute. Prof Young is a strong believer in building an entrepreneurial and translation focused ecosystem in Australia and is on the Executive Board of Accelerating Australia and is a Director of Biodseign.Sydney and co-director of Sydney SPARK, two multidisciplinary training programs that support the development of innovative medical devices and therapeutics (these have already seen the formation of a number of spin-off companies and significant pharma license deals for commercialization). Paul has established or is on the board of Directors of numerous small-medium enterprises including Nanopharm UK Ltd (founder and director 2000-2007), OzUK Ltd (Director 2016-), and Pivot Innovations (Director 2021-). Paul is Chief Executive officer of Ab Initio Pharma Pty Ltd, a pharmaceutical R&D company specializing in the formulation and GMP manufacture of pharmaceutical products in Australia.