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Cesar Velasco
AstraZeneca, Enterprise Innovation Director
Speaker Bio
Dr César Velasco is Enterprise Innovation Director at AstraZeneca Spain, based at the Global Hub in Barcelona.
A physician specialised in preventive medicine and public health, he brings 15+ years of national and international experience connecting healthcare and science ecosystems with AstraZeneca’s R&D to accelerate biomedical innovation and address emerging health challenges.
His career spans clinical, public health, and executive leadership. He trained as a physician–researcher at Hospital Clínic Barcelona, contributed to Ebola preparedness guidelines at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), and served as an epidemiologist with the World Health Organization in Sierra Leone during the Ebola outbreak. He later became Deputy Medical Director at Lozano Blesa University Clinical Hospital and Medical Director of Innovation at Vall d’Hebron, where he introduced a transformative care model and a balanced scorecard and co-founded the European University Hospital Alliance with Karolinska and other leading centres. He also served as General Director in Catalonia’s Health Department and CEO of AQUAS. Before joining AstraZeneca, he led innovation at Novartis as Director of Customer Solutions, Innovation, and Business Excellence.
César holds an MD (Autonomous University of Madrid) and a PhD in Medicine and Surgery (University of Barcelona, cum laude with international distinction), an MPH (Pompeu Fabra University), an Executive MBA (ESADE), and the AMP (Harvard Business School), with further training at Johns Hopkins, LSHTM, and IESE. An expert in HTA, digital health, and AI, he has published extensively and advises WHO’s SAGE on Ebola vaccination.