Chris Bladen received his PhD in Molecular Neuroscience from the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, University of Calgary in 2014. His thesis was based on using Electrophysiology and Molecular Biology to develop drugs and small molecules for Pain and Epilepsy research as well as other clinical purposes. He has a B.Sc. in Freshwater Chemistry and a degree in Environmental management and has extensive experience in both academia and industry. His previous work experience includes several years as an independent environmental consultant for the oil and gas industry in Alberta and several years working in the biopharma industry.  He has developed a world-wide collaborative network in the fields of Electrophysiology, Molecular Biology and Drug design. In addition to being CEO of Zymedyne therapeutics, he is currently an (Online) Lecturer at Macquarie University’s Department of Biomedical Sciences, where he teaches Pharmacology and conducts research into the therapeutic potential of Synthetic and Phyto Cannabinoids.

Claire holds a degree in agriculture and a PhD in biochemistry and has worked in the leadership of scientific associations for 20 years. She started her career within the UK Cambridge biotech cluster and was a co-founder and Manager of the Council of European BioRegions, a network of biotechnology clusters across Europe in Brussels, she also took on the role of SG for the European Biotechnology Network (EBN) in 2012, working across sectors, organisations and countries as part of the EBN mission to facilitate collaboration. 

In 2017, Claire became Director General of the globally-focussed Nanotechnology Industries Association (NIA) which she successfully led until November 2020 when she joined EuropaBio as Director General. In addition to her current role at EuropaBio, she is also the Chair of the International Council of Biotechnology Associations (ICBA) and Governing Board Member for the Innovative Health Initiative (IHI). 

She has a driving interest in collaboration across the value chain to develop the business of science, and the role of internationally networked policies, programmes, skills, finance and infrastructures to create a strong landscape. 

Sara has a decade of experience in commercialization of research-based innovations to spin-outs and licensing. After receiving her PhD from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Sara worked as a postdoc and academia-industry liaison at the Finnish Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland. Before joining Innovestor, she was Head of Innovation at Helsinki Innovation Services, and IPR Manager at Technical Research Centre of Finland VTT. Sara serves in the boards of Finnish Bioindustries as well as several of Innovestor’s portfolio companies.

Miruna brings over 19 years of investment expertise across direct equity, debt, and fund investments in Europe. She currently serves as an Investment Manager at the European Investment Fund (EIF), where she leads investments in venture capital and private equity funds, with a particular focus on life sciences and healthcare. Since joining EIF in 2016, Miruna has represented the organisation on the Advisory Boards of more than 30 funds across several geographies and strategies. Her prior experience includes roles in private equity with Advent International and UniCredit, as well as lending products with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

Murat is the CEO of Antiverse with background in software engineering and bioinformatics. Mid-career he developed high-frequency trading systems. After switching to biotech, he built cell imaging software and lab robots to accelerate cancer research and automated Thermo Fisher Scientific’s gene synthesis workflows. He also co-founded consultancy and biotech companies Svarlight and Antiverse. Murat is currently focusing on to realise Antiverse’s mission: engineering the future of drug discovery.

Prior to launching LBBAL™ Alianza, Dr. Rosoff was a partnering executive with roles of increasing seniority at Genentech, Gilead, Kite and Exelixis. Over the course of over two decades, she had the opportunity to lead and participate in a wide diversity of deals, negotiations, diligence exercises, alliances, technology transfers, M&A integrations, dispute resolution negotiations, amendments and terminations–at all stages of the drug development and commercialization lifecycle and in multiple therapeutic areas.

Dr. Rosoff earned a doctorate in Pharmacology from the University of Washington, where she was an HHMI pre-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Randall T. Moon. She conducted her postdoctoral work at Stanford, studying Wnt signal transduction and cell adhesion under the guidance of James Nelson. Dr. Rosoff additionally gained valuable applied biotechnology experience at Ingenuity Systems (now part of Qiagen), Caliper Life Sciences and Lynx Therapeutics (now part of Illumina) in operational, program management and business development roles.