Kent joined the Overseas Development Institute after teaching at Yale University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He is a political economist specializing in the health sector - particularly policy analysis and strategy development. Kent is presently building a programme which aims to assist pro-poor reform groups manage the political dimensions of policy change. He has worked and consulted for a range of organisations including WHO, the World Bank, UNAIDS, UNICEF, and DFID, as well as for national governments and major public-private health partnerships -at headquarters and field levels. His research interests include relationships among multilateral organisations and between multilateral organisations and national governments, aid effectiveness, global health initiatives, and global health governance - including the role of the private sector therein. He has a PhD from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and is widely published. His most recent book 'Making Health Policy' is available from Open University Press.

Dr Sean Butler studied Law at Oxford (St Edmund Hall) and the LSE, London, as well as Genetics at Cambridge (CPGS) before taking his PhD in social science at Imperial College, London. He is a qualified solicitor, and has worked in private practice and for Royal Dutch Shell in the UK specialising in intellectual property, particularly in life sciences. His field of research is technology transfer, in particular academic-industry collaborations, spin-outs and patent licensing. He has carried out research projects for the BBSRC and the Finnish government, and is currently working on a project for the European Commission on intellectual property in collaborative research.