Peter Varnai
Partner
Dr Peter Varnai is Partner at Technopolis Group and responsible for the Group’s Health and Life Sciences unit. Peter has over 25 years of experience in research, education and consulting, including programme evaluations, impact assessments and strategic work for national and international clients. Peter has a broad interest in linking research and innovation programmes to policy and business applications. He is expert in designing programme logic frames, developing indicators and implementing those to track programme achievements. Peter applies methods ranging from quantitative modelling to qualitative techniques including interviews and case studies.
Peter has led or contributed to over 90 high-profile health research and innovation policy studies. His areas of interest include pharmaceutical innovation, health security and preparedness, healthy ageing, research and healthcare infrastructure, industry-academia partnership, workforce capacity building, digital health services, data sharing and cross-border healthcare. He was responsible for the evaluation and impact assessment of the EU general pharmaceutical legislation and conducted the impact assessment of the Innovative Health Initiative. In the UK, he has led a number of process and impact evaluations where research programmes were co-funded by UKRI (MRC, ESRC), government agencies (DHSC, FCDO) and third sector organisations (Wellcome, CRUK). This includes the evaluation of the UK Vaccine Network and the study on the mental health R&D ecosystem. Peter is currently leading the evaluation of the Medicines Patent Pool for Unitaid.
Prior to joining Technopolis, Peter was an academic leading a research group at the University of Sussex; conducted research as Wellcome Trust International Prize fellow at the University of Cambridge and at the CNRS in France. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK) and has published widely in leading scientific journals. Peter trained originally as a pharmaceutical engineer and obtained MEng degree from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. Peter also holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford and an MBA from Imperial College Business School.
