Dr Malgorzata Barczyk graduated with MSc in Molecular Biology from the Jagiellonian University in Poland and holds a PhD in Biomedicine from the University of Bergen, Norway. Following her PhD in 2009, she worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Princes Margaret Cancer Centre at University Health Network in Toronto in prof. Tsao laboratory. After moving back to Norway Malgorzata continued the cancer research and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Western Norway Regional Health Authority. During almost a decade of successful scientific career in Sweden, Norway and Canada, she published 13 scientific papers in peer review journals.

In 2014 she joined VIS, a technology transfer office serving several research institutions in Bergen, including University of Bergen and Haukeland University Hospital. As a Senior Innovation Manager at VIS she is managing the portfolio of projects within drug development, diagnostics and medical devices. Her experience within the technology transfer includes evaluation and development of proof-of-concept projects until exit phase, commercialization strategy development, IP portfolio management and handling partnering agreements.

Dr Bauer is a graduate of Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt (Biology) and holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology. 

After spending four years as a research scientist at the Nestlé Research Center in Lausanne, Dr Bauer joined the R&D Center of Lesaffre International, the world leader in the baker’s yeast market, where he was Head of the Molecular Biology and Genetics Team. In 2000 he joined Axaron Bioscience AG in Heidelberg, a joint venture of BASF and Lynx Therapeutics from where he moved on to Gentana GmbH, a biotech company providing gene expression analysis services based on its proprietary technology platform. After acting as CEO of Gentana for two years, Dr Bauer joined EMBL Enterprise Management Technology Transfer GmbH, a 100% subsidiary of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory as Business Development Manager.

As of May 2011 he is appointed as Deputy Managing Director of EMBLEM and responsible for Business Development. Dr Bauer is alumnus of the Chemical Industry Fund within the German Chemical Industry Association and the St. Gallen Business School.

Angela Calvert is a Deputy Head of Group, in the Licensing & Ventures at Oxford University Innovation (OUI), where she manages a team of Licensing and Ventures Managers, specialising in Life Sciences. She overseas her team in the management of a large intellectual property portfolio, identification and protection new IP, project management, market evaluation, development of commercial strategy and commercialisation of the technology portfolio through technology licensing, creation of spin outs, raising investment, material sales, post deal management and in leading other strategic collaborations. Angela also represents the University as an Observer on the board of Osler Diagnostics, which spun out of the University in 2016.

Prior to working at OUI she held a commercial role at the UK Human Tissue Bank, responsible for Business Development and Sales. Here she played an influential role in evaluation of new products and business strategy and was instrumental in establishing a number of relationships, which ultimately led into a series of merger negotiations and exit opportunities for the business. Before this she held roles in knowledge and technology transfer and sales. She has a PhD and MSc in Plant Molecular Biology from the University of Birmingham.  

Currently member of Boehringer Ingelheim’s Business Development & Licensing Team, and based in Germany, Julie is responsible for leading contract negotiations and managing strategic alliances (CAM) that support the scientific and business development objectives of the Innovation Unit at Boehringer Ingelheim. In this role and throughout her career, Julie has proactively and effectively interacted with key stakeholders of the life sciences ecosystem to drive the establishment of strategic alliances and partnerships to progress innovative science towards application. Prior to joining Contracts and Alliance Management, Julie was Head, Research Beyond Borders (RBB) Project Office and Strategic Partnering at Boehringer Ingelheim, where she fostered the development and implementation of new science project proposals and their enablement through external sources of innovation. Prior to joining RBB, Julie was Director, Corporate Development at Genome Canada, where she developed and lead strategic international partnerships with an emphasis on public-private partnerships.

Earlier in her career, Julie supported Boehringer’s Infectious Disease Research efforts at its Canadian research site, in her role as Head, Scientific Administration and External Scientific Affairs. Julie has also acted as consultant, working with inventors, academic institutions, start-up companies, investors and other stakeholders, on strategic planning including business development and partnering initiatives, commercialization strategies, and licensing and due diligence of new technologies with both high applied and commercial potential. Julie graduated with an M.Sc in Immunology and Virology from Institut Armand-Frappier, Quebec, Canada.

Martin is a life scientist and executive leader with 20 years experience in international business development, licensing and technology transfer in the pharma, med-tech, biotech and material sciences sector and ranging from industry to the public research sector.
As of January, 1, 2017 Martin Raditsch the CEO of Innovectis GmbH, the knowledge transfer company and 100% subsidiary of Goethe University Frankfurt.

Martin is a graduate of Heidelberg University and holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology. He is certified as RTTP (registered technology transfer professional) by the global “Alliance of Technology Transfer Professionals” (ATTP).
Following his Ph.D., Martin worked at BASF in several positions, and joint in 2001 joined EMBL Enterprise Management Technology Transfer GmbH (EMBLEM). As of 2004 he served as Deputy Managing Director of EMBLEM.
In 2011 Martin took on the position as Managing Director at InnovationLab GmbH in Heidelberg. InnovationLab is the joined R&D and transfer institute of University of Heidelberg, University of Mannheim, BASF, Merck, Heidelberger Printing Press and SAP.
Martin was involved in the funding process off 16 start-ups and is co-founder of the European Institute for Pharma Logistics (EIPL).

Matthias Stein-Gerlach joined LDC as Head of Business Development in October 2020. For over 16 years previously he was Senior Patent & Licensing Manager at Max Planck Innovation GmbH, Munich, where he played a significant role in the LDC’s conception and development. He was also chairman of the Foundation Board at the DVCI, the LDC’s main shareholder, for over 10 years. Matthias Stein-Gerlach studied Biology at the University of Mainz, and completed additional commercial training. He subsequently obtained his PhD at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried, under the supervision of Prof. Axel Ullrich. In 1997, together with Axel Ullrich and other colleagues, he founded Virgene, later Axxima Pharmaceuticals AG, where he worked as VP Business Development until moving to Max Planck Innovation.

Prof. Dr Frank Entschladen has studied Biology in Aachen (Germany). He has made his PhD at the McGill University (Montreal, Canada) and at the University of Witten/Herdecke (Germany). He has been researcher in Witten for 20 years. During his research, his group established a new cell migration technology as a pre-clinical in vitro test system for immune and tumor cell behavior. As one of his most important research discoveries, Prof. Entschladen identified and validated beta-blockers as the first anti-metastatic drugs in a translational research from cell assays, through animal experiments, to patient studies. His research has been published in over 70 scientific papers.
Prof. Entschladen joined the pharmaceutical industry as co-founder of the start-up company MetaVì Labs (Austin, TX) in 2011, and he is Chief Scientific Officer of this company. MetaVì Labs is one of the leading providers of automated analysis of life cell microscopy. Since 2015, Prof. Entschladen is Manager Patents & Licenses in the Life Science team at PROvendis.

Thomas Hegendörfer is the New Ventures Lead for Germany at Johnson & Johnson Innovation. He is responsible for identifying collaboration opportunities and forging partnerships between the London Innovation Center and German scientists, innovators, and entrepreneurs.

Before joining Johnson & Johnson, Thomas was Head of Business Development at Lead Discovery Center GmbH (LDC), a leading translational center in Germany advancing academic drug discovery into application. In this position, he was responsible for closing numerous partnerships and licensing deals with partners from the pharmaceutical industry and biotech companies across major indications.

Prior to joining the LDC he worked in Licensing and Patent Management at Max-Planck-Innovation. Thomas graduated with an M.Sc in Molecular Medicine from Imperial College, London, and holds a B.Sc. degree in Molecular Biotechnology from the Technical University of Munich.

Thomas Hesterkamp is heading an office of the product development unit of the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF). Thomas serves various project steering committees of DZIF (more generally BMBF) funded projects and provides access to early and informal scientific and regulatory advice through the competent authorities.

Thomas also serves the technology transfer committee of DZIF and the TT offices of the DZIF member institutions. In doing so DZIF wishes to advance the much-needed product related projects to a stage of value inflection, ready for external partnerships and innovation. Previously Thomas held scientific and managerial positions in the private sector, at Evotec and Arpida. Thomas is a trained human biologist.

Sarah is Head of Licensing at Bayerische Patentallianz, the Technology Transfer Office of 28 Bavarian Universities and Universities of Applied Sciences.

In her role as Head of Licensing she is responsible for scientific and business evaluation of new technologies and ideas and lead negotiations of early stage programs. Furthermore she manages partnerships with Start-ups, SMEs and Pharma industry. Sarah holds a Diploma in Chemistry and received her PhD in Organic/Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Hamburg. In this period she was responsible for supervising a research team in the field of oncology. In her previous role as a Licensing Manager within Bayerische Patentallianz she focused on IP Management, Marketing and Business Development.

Currently Director of International Development at FIST S.A. (French Technology Transfer Company of the CNRS), Stéphane Mottola has 20 years experience in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. For more than a decade, she has been involved in the evaluation and selection of innovative technologies, the management of the industrial property strategy, and the negotiation of strategic deals, such as licences and collaboration agreements with Start-up, SME and Big pharma.

Previously to FIST S.A., Stéphane Mottola worked as a Patent attorney in Paris. She has also well rounded experience of international organization as she was for three years examiner for pharmaceuticals at the European Patent Office in Munich. After that, she joined the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations in Roma, where she was an associate expert within the Nutrition Division. She enhanced her international culture by working one year in Los Angeles within the marketing department of an US technology company.

Stéphane Mottola is Doctor in Pharmacy, member of the LES; she is from French mother tong and speaks fluently English, German and Italian.

Stefanie Possekel spent more than 10 years in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry and has broad experience in in- and outlicensing of clinical and preclinical projects. In particular, she successfully worked on a number of major research and development collaborations with academic institutions. 

She joined Ascenion in October 2012 from Novartis, where she served as Director Strategic Alliances with global responsibilities for the Musculoskeletal Disease Area and Oncology. Prior to that she worked as Director Business Development at Santhera Pharmaceuticals, a Swiss-based specialty pharmaceutical company for orphan neuromuscular diseases. 

Stefanie studied Biology at the Philipps University Marburg with a specific focus on Microbiology, Immunology, Genetics and Biochemistry and received her PhD in 1995. During her thesis she spent time at the Biocenter in Basel and worked closely with researchers at the Institute de Myologie in Paris, France. After her PhD, Stefanie spent 3 years in the Bay Area (California), working as a freelance science writer and scientific consultant to Affymetrix.

After graduating in Biochemistry from the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University in Greifswald, Germany Julie joined the group of Martin Groschup at the Friedrich Loeffler Institute in Germany to earn a PhD on the topic of Mad Cow Disease.

After her PhD she moved to Calgary, Canada as a postdoc first in Jan Braun’s lab and followed by a stay in Peter K Stys’s lab. In both labs she focused on neurodegenerative diseases using molecular and biochemical methods and state of the art imaging techniques in the Stys lab. After returning to Europe in 2014 she started another postdoc at the IOCB in Prague focusing on cancer research and ultimately joined the TTO team full time in January 2016.

In the IOCB-TTO team Julie focuses mainly on projects related to cancer research and is involved in PR and communication.

Dr Laura Spinardi graduated in Biology at the University of Turin and holds a PhD in Neurobiology under the joint supervision of the New York University Medical Center; she then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg and Monterotondo (Rome). After a decade of successful scientific and professional achievements in the USA, France and Germany as a research scientist, she joined in 2007 the Ca’ Granda IRCCS Foundation - Milan Policlinico Hospital, a public medical and research center, where she founded the Technology Transfer Office. 

She is currently managing the Policlinico TTO and is in charge for scouting, patenting, transferring and educational activities; she is Board Member of Netval, the Italian Network of Technology Transfer Offices of Universities and Research Organizations.

Joachim Vogt is Director Search & Evaluation Western Europe at AbbVie. He is responsible for the identification of European business opportunities across all indications and technologies of interest for AbbVie and serves as key contact for European partners, including academic institutions, biotech companies, venture capital, governments and non-profit organizations.

Joachim spent more than 15 years in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry in BD and research roles. He gained broad experience in- and outlicensing of preclinical and clinical projects as well as research technologies. Before joining AbbVie, Joachim was Director of Early Stage Partnering at Roche, served as Senior Manager at Wilex AG and was Head of IP Licensing at the tech transfer office Bayerische Patentallianz.  Joachim holds a diploma in chemistry and received his PhD in protein crystallography at the University of Freiburg.