Co-Chairs

Karl Einhäupl

Professor of Neurology and CEO, Charité Medical School, Berlin/Germany

Karl Einhaeupl is one of the most distinguished neurologists in Germany. He also served as the President of the Scientific Advisory Council to the German Federal Government (Wissenschaftsrat). He has received numerous awards and is a member of the Leopoldina, the National Academy of Sciences in Germany. Since 2008 he has served as the CEO of Charité – Universitaetsmedizin Berlin. Vita

Stephan Gutzeit

Executive Director, Stiftung Charité, Berlin/Germany

Stephan Gutzeit studied chemistry and philosophy and after a stint at a global consultancy firm became a knowledge entrepreneur in 1998, co-founding two private universities in Berlin. Today he directs Stiftung Charite, serves in the investment committee at Charite Biomedical Fund, and is a consultant for universities and foundations. In May 2012 he will become Executive Director at Stiftung Neues Bauhaus, a new foundation devoted to the support of deep innovation, in healthcare and elsewhere. Vita

Lesa Mitchell

Vice President, Kauffman Foundation, Kansas City/USA

Lesa Mitchell spent the first twenty years of her career in global executive roles at Aventis and Quintiles. She joined the Kauffman Foundation, the world's largest foundation supporting entrepreneurship, in 2003 and is its VP in charge of advancing innovation. Vita


Main Programme: Confirmed Speakers

Ram Aiyar

Ram Aiyar, Associate, Sofinovva Partners, Paris/ France Vita

Edward S. Andrle

Vice President of Business Development and Strategy, Sorin Group, Milan/ Italy.

Ed Anderle is also a director at MD Start SA in Lausanne/ Switzerland. Prior to Sorin, Mr. Andrle co-founded, developed, and sold three medical device companies in the Minneapolis area. Teramed was focused on an endovascular system to treat abdominal aortic aneurysms and was acquired by Johnson&Johnson. Myocor developed an implantable device to treat mitral valve regurgitation and was acquired by Edwards. And StarFire Medical developed technology to treat brain aneurysms and was acquired by NFocus Neuromedical. Mr. Andrle also spent five years as a Vice President of Boston Scientific. He has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BS in Chemical engineering from the University of Notre Dame. Vita

Michael J. Billig

Co-Founder & CEO, Experien Group, Sunnyvale/ USA
 
Mike co-founded Experien Group in 2003. His entire 35+ year professional career has been involved with regulatory affairs, quality systems, clinical research, and general management for medical device companies like MedTronic and Abbott. Mike has secured regulatory approval for hundreds of medical device products across the U.S., Europe, Canada, Central and South America, and Asia. He has particular expertise in the interventional cardiology and cardiac surgery areas. Mike earned his BS degree in Microbiology from the University of Minnesota. Vita

Detlef Boesebeck

Head (Executive physician) of the coordinating center for north-eastern Germany, German Organ Transplantation Foundation (DSO)
 
Detlef Boesebeck has been head of the regional coordinating center for north-eastern Germany since 2010. The DSO has divided the country into seven geographical organ donor regions. Each region has its own coordinating center. Detlef Boesebeck received his medical degree from Free University Berlin. He specialized in internal medicine and worked as coordinator for the DSO at the transplantation center in Munich, before he became executive physician at the coordination center of the DSO in Bavaria.

Michael Brehm

Managing Director, Rebate Networks GmbH; Investor, Daily Deal GmbH; Venture Partner, Target Partners GmbH; Berlin/ Germany
 
Michael Brehm founded his first company while still in school – a company for snowboard clothing. Following his studies he worked at Merrill Lynch in Frankfurt/M in the department of mergers and acquisitions. He quit in order join and help build the StudiVZ group. Back then a 3 people company, StudiVZ now is one of the largest internet based social networks with approx. 15 Mio users. Vita

Berit Bretthauer

Senior Client Partner, Life Sciences, Korn/Ferry International, Frankfurt/ Germany
 
Berit Bretthauer focuses on senior-level placements in the life sciences and chemical space, including pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and medical devices/diagnostic sectors. Apart from searches done locally in Germany, her reach expands throughout Europe and internationally. She earned a PhD degree from FU Berlin and served as assistant professor at the John F. Kennedy Institute in Berlin. She also received a master of arts degree from the New School for Social Research in New York. Vita

Charlie Cameron

Founder and Managing Director, Hub Angels Investment Group LLC; Senior Vice President, Cooley LLP; Boston/USA

Charlie Cameron holds an MBA from MIT and an MPH from Harvard University. He founded the "Hub Angels" in Boston and has managed them for more than 10 years. This syndicate of business angels has raised several funds and invested more than 12 million USD so far. Charlie has been researching and teaching angel investing at Harvard, MIT, and other universities. Vita

David Cassak

Vice President, Elsevier Business Intelligence, Bridgewater/USA

David Cassak earned a BA from Drew University and did graduate work at Columbia and Princeton, earning an MA, with honors from the former, before joining Cassak Publications Inc., a family-run business that published trade journals for the hospital and alternate site distribution industries. For much of the 1980s, he wrote and spoke frequently about the medical/surgical and hospital supply industries, before joining The Wilkerson Group, a health care consulting company, in 1988, as an editor of IN VIVO: The Business & Medicine Report. Vita

Juergen Conrad

Partner

He received his PhD in molecular biology from the University of Mainz. He was project leader at former Schering AG, Berlin, und later head of research of the institute for research on diagnostics, a subsidiary of Schering AG. In 1992, he founded ConsulTech GmbH and has since than supported many companies with his specific know-how on corporate financing in the pharma, biotech, and medical devices industry sector. His long-standing experience in realization of many publicly funded international and national research and development projects in the life sciences is the basis of our and our customer’s success.

Jean-Jacques Degroof

Private Investor, Lecturer, Researcher, Brussels/ Belgium
 
Jean-Jacques Degroof supports the translation of academic research into innovative venture endeavors. He does this both at the academic level through research and teaching and in practice through coaching, consulting with, and investing in start-up initiatives as a business angel. He holds MS and PhD degrees from the MIT Sloan School of Management, is an Affiliated Researcher at the Industrial Performance Center at MIT, and has served on several company boards. Vita

Horst Domdey

Managing Director, BioM Biotech Cluster Development GmbH,  Munich/Germany

Horst Domdey held research positions in Germany, Switzerland and the United States before he became Professor for Biochemistry at the University of Munich in 1994. Since 1997, he has been managing BioM AG, a seed fund which has financed more than 40 biotech start-ups to date, and BioM GmbH, the management organisation for the Munich Biotech Cluster m4. Among others he is also the speaker/coordinator of two Bavaria-wide scientific networks on functional genomics and systems biology. Vita

Knut Elbers

Knut Elbers, Partner, Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund, Frankfurt/ Germany

Knut joined Boehringer Ingelheim in 1995 in the international research and development department of the animal health business. From 1999 to 2008 he was heading the European vaccine research organization for animal health. Subsequently he collected experiences in human antibody related research and development being involved in R&D project management and Collaborative Research for NBEs. During his work at Boehringer Ingelheim Knut was involved in 12 patent applications and key development projects like (Ingelvac PRRSV, Enterisol Ileitis, Ingelvac CircoFLEX) contributing significantly to the vaccine business success of the animal health business of Boehringer Ingelheim. Knut has studied biology at the Eberhard-Karls-University in Tübingen with specific focus on virology and immunology. He performed his Ph.D. work at the federal institute for viral diseases in Tübingen focusing on protein processing during viral replication and pathogen/host interaction mechanism.

Anne M. Glover

Chief Executive, Amadeus Capital Partners Ltd, London/UK

Anne M. Glover is a co-Founder and chief executive of Amadeus Capital Partners Limited, the management company that provides investment services to the Amadeus venture capital funds. Previously she was a member of the investment team at Apax Partners, invested as a business angel, and served as COO at the Virtuality Group plc. In 2004-2005 Anne was chairman of the British Venture Capital Association (BVCA), and currently she is a non-executive director of the UK government's Technology Strategy Board. She holds an MA in Metallurgy and Materials Science from Clare College, Cambridge, and an MA in Public and Private Management from Yale. Vita

Frank Grossmann

Founder and CEO, Orphanbiotec AG, Zurich/ Switzerland
 
Frank Grossmann has been the CEO of Orphanbiotec AG, based in Zurich, since 2009, as well the CEO of the research foundation Orphanbiotec since 2010. Frank is a self- starting, entrepreneurial personality, well versed in developing and implementing new concepts and projects. Frank takes an in-depth and structured, goal‐oriented approach and is a successful manager with demonstrated coaching and team skills. He specialises in rare & orphan disease, pharmacology, social entrepreneurship, human nutrition, medicine and veterinary medicine and holds a PhD from the University of Zurich.

Jan Dirk Heerma

Partner, SJ Berwin, Berlin/ Germany

Jan Dirk Heerma is a partner in SJ Berwin’s Berlin office. He has a special focus on intellectual property rights, in particular patent rights and copyrights. He is head of SJ Berwin's Technology Group in transfer, licensing and R&D co-operations. Jan took his second state exam in law in 1994 in Passau/Germany. He wrote his PhD thesis on shelf companies and was admitted to the bar in 1996. Before joining SJ Berwin in 2001, Jan worked with CMS. He became a partner of SJ Berwin in 2002.

John Hession

Partner, Cooley LLP, Boston/USA
 
John Hession is a partner in the Venture Capital Financings and Emerging Companies practice groups and a member of the Cooley Business department. He joined the Firm in 2007 and helped open Cooley's Boston office. Mr Hession represents emerging-growth companies, principally in the medical device, life sciences, software and digital media fields, as well as angels and venture capital funds in the investment process in these areas.

Brady Huggett

Business Editor, Nature Biotechnology, New York/USA

Brady Huggett is business editor at Nature Biotechnology, where he also handles the magazine’s Bioentrepreneur section. He is the former managing editor for the collection of BioWorld publications, and has been covering the biotechnology industry for more than a decade. He holds a Bachelor of Science in biology from Wake Forest University and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina a Chapel Hill.

Anula Jayasuriya

Managing Director, Evolvence India Life Science Fund, San Francisco/USA

Anula Jayasuriya holds an MD, a PhD, and an MBA, all from Harvard. She is a life science venture capitalist and directs the Evolvence India Life Science Fund, which provides growth capital to companies operating in the Indian healthcare sector. She was previously a partner with Skyline Ventures in Palo Alto, and prior to that with the German – US venture capital firm TVM, in San Francisco. She is a trustee at Astia and a director at several other companies and organizations. Vita

Mattias Kyhlstedt

CEO and Founder, Synergus AB and Synergus Corp, Stockholm/Sweden

Mattias Kyhlstedt has over 15 years of experience in the medical device industry. Mattias started his career within quality and regulatory and has held several positions within production, quality, logistics and R&D in a global medical device corporation specialized in intensive care. During the years, Mattias also developed a unique and extensive reimbursement and market access knowledge and is today combining his regulatory and business development insights when consulting medical device companies worldwide on how to develop their reimbursement and regulatory strategies. Vita

Olivier Litzka

Partner, Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners, Paris/France.
 
Olivier Litzka is a partner at Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners, which he joined in 2006. He also serves as a managing partner at BioDiscovery II and BioDiscovery III. Previously, Dr. Litzka was a Partner at 3i Group PLC and Partner at Mercer Management Consulting from 1998 to 2003. He is a director at Probiodrug AG, SuperSonic Imagine SA, Endosense SA, and JenaValve Technology GmbH. He holds a PhD in molecular microbiology from the Institute for Microbiology at the University of Munich; his scientific research work was done in Munich and Oxford. Vita

Martin Mahn

Managing Director, Humboldt-Innovation GmbH, Berlin/ Germany

Martin Mahn is managing director of Humboldt-Innovation. As a biologist and environmental economist and as a result of his long-term experience in global industry, he has expertise in the fields of both science and business. Vita

Allan W. May

Founder and Chairman, Life Science Angels; Managing Director, Emergent Medical Partners, Portola Valley/USA

Allan founded Life Science Angels (LSA), the largest angel organization focused solely on early stage medical device and life science start-ups. Since 2005, LSA has invested USD 30M in 30 early stage companies and attracted in excess of USD 600M in contemporary or follow-on venture capital. In 2007, Allan joined renowned inventor, entrepreneur, and cardiac surgeon, Dr. Thomas Fogarty, in co-founding Emergent Medical Partners, solely focused on early stage medical device company creation and investing.  EMP has made 16 investments to date. Allan also is Chairman of the Board of the Kauffman Foundation’s Angel Capital Education Foundation. Vita

Juergen Meier

Partner, Vossius & Partner, Munich/ Germany

Juergen Meier is a patent attorney and a european trademark attorney. He took his PhD at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg and worked as a postdoc at McGill University on gene therapy in the field of neurology. He joined Vossius & Partner in 1998. Vita

John Milad

Investor, NBGI Ventures, London/UK

John has over 15 years experience in private equity, venture start-ups, corporate finance and the healthcare industry. He joined from Insight Capital, which he founded to provide fundraising, strategy, and M&A advisory services to life sciences companies and investors. John also serves as an advisor to the NHS National Institute for Health Research. He started his career as an investment banker at Lehman Brothers, followed by three years as a private equity professional at Kirkland Investors.  John holds a BA in Political Science from University of Chicago. Vita

Simon E. Moroney

Chief Executive Officer, MorphoSys AG, Martinsried/ Germany

Simon Moroney is one of the company’s co-founders. Prior to that, he held positions in the department of pharmacology, University of Cambridge, UK, and at other universities. He was an associate in the Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA, and an employee of ImmunoGen Inc., where he worked on the first generation of anti-cancer antibody conjugates. Simon studied chemistry in his native New Zealand, and was a Commonwealth Scholar to the University of Oxford, where he was awarded a DPhil in Chemistry. In 2002, he received the German Cross of the Order of Merit from Johannes Rau, President of the Federal Republic of Germany, for his services to the biotechnology industry.

Ilya Nykin

Co-Founder and Managing Director, Prolog Ventures, St. Louis/USA

Ilya Nykin has more than 20 years of experience with science and technology ventures as both an entrepreneur and investor. He is a founder and managing director of Prolog. Before Prolog, he co-founded a medical software business that was acquired by a pharmaceutical subsidiary of Nestlé, and then played a key role in launching and financing several other healthcare companies from a technology incubator. Ilya studied in Moscow at MGPI, Leningrad (St. Petersburg) University, and Odessa University, and holds a master's degree in applied mathematics. Vita

Alexander Osterwalder

Author, Speaker, and Advisor on Business Model Innovator, Geneva/ Switzerland

Alexander Osterwalder works as an independent author, speaker and advisor with a particular focus on business model innovation, strategic management and management innovation. Besides his independent activities he is partner at Arvetica, a consulting boutique focusing on the private banking and wealth management industry. His role includes business development and the management of a peer knowledge exchange platform for senior executives in private banking. Before that Dr. Osterwalder founded and ran BusinessModelDesign.com, a consulting boutique active in strategy consulting with a focus on business model innovation. He also helped develop and implement the strategy and business concept of a globally active not for profit network called The Constellation for over one year in Thailand.

Stefan Plantoer

Engagement Manager, IMS Health, Munich/Germany
 
Stefan is Engagement Manager at IMS Health. Previously, he worked at Merck and the Confederation of the Pharmaceutical Industry in Germany. He holds a PhD in microbiology from the University of Tuebingen and an MBA from the European Business School. Vita

John Pugh

Director of Digital, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma GmbH, Frankfurt/ Germany
 
John Pugh is Director of Digital Communications at Boehringer Ingelheim’s Global Centre in Germany. With a background as a journalist and Internet start-up entrepreneur, he has over 17 year’s media experience, 10 of them in digital. John is responsible for Boehringer ingelheim’s global social media strategy and is regularly cited as a global thought leader in the field. Vita

Christoph Regierer

Attorney, German Chartered Accountant and Tax Advisor, RoeverBroennerSusat, Berlin/ Germany
 
Christoph has been practising law since 1992. He brings this extensive legal experience into his position as the managing partner for tax and corporate structuring of RoeverBroennerSusat, an auditing and tax consulting firm. He has a PhD in Business Law from FU Berlin. His practice focuses on life sciences, IP accounting and taxation, and business appraisals, among other areas.

Martin Rothman

Martin Rothman, Vice President, Medical Affairs for Coronary and Peripheral Vascular Business, MedTronic, Santa Rosa/USA

Martin Rothman, a world-renowned interventional cardiologist, has worked for the UK National Health Service for almost 40 years, with the past decade spent as director of cardiac research and development at the London Chest Hospital. Rothman has conducted scores of clinical trials in the interventional-cardiology field and led research into stem-cell therapy for heart failure. Vita

Hartmut Ruetten

Head Translational Medicine, R&D Diabetes Division, Sanofi-Aventis
 
Hartmut Ruetten has been working for Sanofi-Aventis since 1996 in different positions. Since 2010 he has been head of translational medicine in the R&D Diabetes Division. He received his degree in medicine from the University of Cologne. Besides a medical doctorate he holds a PhD in Philosophy from Oxford Brookes University. Before he began his career in the industrial sector, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the ‘William Harvey Research Institute’ (WHRI) at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Stephan Schambach

Founder & Chairman, Demandware, Boston and Berlin  
 
Stephan Schambach is a true eCommerce Visionary: He was among the first to recognize the potential of this industry, and he independently invented some of today's essential industry standards. Stephan is the Founder of Demandware and has served as the chairman of the board of directors since the inception in February 2004. Prior to founding Demandware, Mr. Schambach served as CEO of Intershop Communications AG, an e-commerce company that he founded in 1992 and brought public in 1998. He studied physics in Jena and was among the first to found a software company in East Germany after the Berlin Wall came down. Vita

Karlheinz Schmelig

Partner, CREATHOR VENTURE, Bad Homburg/Germany

Karlheinz Schmelig is a Partner at CREATHOR VENTURE with focus on the life sciences sector and has been active in the venture capital industry since 1999. He started his venture capital career as an Investment Manager at Technologieholding and later was an Investment Director with 3i. Prior to his venture capital career, Mr Schmelig spent ten years in several global management positions with Boehringer Mannheim and F. Hoffmann-La Roche, with seven of those years spent in the USA. Vita

Johannes Schneider-Littfeld

Corporate Vice President, Otto Bock HealthCare GmbH, Duderstadt/Germany

Johannes Schneider-Littfeld studied biochemistry and held CEO positions at Bauerfeind, Becton-Dickinson, Disetronic, the Strategy Consultant S&H as well as in medical research before becoming Corporate Vice President at Otto Bock Healthcare in 2002 Vita

Mike Schuessl

Key Account / ClusterManager Gesundheitswirtschaft, Investitionsbank Berlin/ Germany

Mike studied economics in Berlin. Since 1997 he has been working for Investitionsbank Berlin (IBB). Starting 2005 he has been responsible for more than 300 companies in the health care sector. For about 40 of them he has been key account manager. He is working with companies in the areas of pharma, biotech, medtech, and hospital care. Together with his clients he structures R&D as well as investment projects, including income from grants.

Wolfgang Spoerr

Wolfgang Spoerr, Partner, Hengeler Mueller, Berlin/Germany

Wolfgang has been a partner in the Berlin office of Hengeler Mueller since 2001. Wolfgang joined Hengeler Mueller in 2000 coming from a well-known law firm where he also had been a partner. Wolfgang regularly advises highly regulated industry sectors, in particular health care and telecommunications/media. He has more than 15 years of experience in the health care sector.

Halle Tecco

Founder and CEO, Rock Health, San Francisco/USA

Halle directs Rock Health, the first seed-accelerator for health apps. She works directly with startups, helping them develop sustainable business models and connecting them with strategic partners. She has written for Harvard Business School Publishing, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Glamour.com and Forbes. Halle earned a BS at Case Western Reserve University and her MBA at Harvard Business School.

Kaitlin Thaney

Manager of External Partnerships, Digital Science, London/UK
 
Kaitlin Thaney joined Digital Science as Manager of External Partnerships, responsible for the group’s public facing activities and evangelism. She comes from the open science world, most recently serving as manager of the science programs at Creative Commons. She is passionate about interoperability, has an affinity for single malts, and loves connecting the unlikely folk she`s met on her travels. Former lives include First Amendment freedom fighter, Latin scholar, and cub reporter. Vita

Thomas Unger

Professor for Pharmacology & Experimental Medicine, Maastricht University
 
Thomas Unger is Scientific Director of CARIM - School for Cardiovascular Diseases at Maastricht University. Previously, he directed the Institute of Pharmacology and the Center for Cardiovascular Research (CCR) at Charité – Universitaetsmedizin Berlin. Professor Unger also chairs the German Institute for High Blood Pressure Research in Berlin (DIB). Between 1994 and 2001, he was director of the Institute of Pharmacology at University of Kiel, Germany. Professor Unger studied medicine in Germany and the UK and earned his MD from the University of Heidelberg. Vita

Sander van Deventer

Partner, Forbion Capital Partners, AD Naarden/Netherlands

Sander van Deventer has extensive experience in translational research with particular emphasis on drug development, and significant regulatory experience with the EMA and FDA. Sander van Deventer is professor of translational gastroenterology at Leiden University Medical Center and is general partner of Forbion Capital Partners (formerly, ABN AMRO Capital). He is co-founder of the gene therapy company Amsterdam Molecular Therapeutics, and currently holds a part-time position on the company´s board as CSO. He also holds a board seat at Argos Therapeutics. Dr. van Deventer received his medical degree and doctor of philosophy from the University of Amsterdam. Vita

Stefan Vilsmeier

Founder and CEO, Brainlab AG, Munich/ Germany

Since founding Brainlab in 1989, Stefan has served as its CEO and driven the company’s innovation and customer focus. A self-taught programmer, he prepared the ground for his enterprise at the age of 17 when he wrote a book on 3D Graphics. With more than 50,000 copies sold, it turned into a bestseller in its category. In 1989, Vilsmeier enrolled at TU Munich, to study computer programming and the theory of medical technology. But his enterprising nature left little time for theory. While still in the first semester, Vilsmeier founded Brainlab GmbH. During the following years, he spearheaded new developments in the area of neuro-navigation and radiotherapy. Today, Brainlab AG employs 1,000 people worldwide, generating more than 50 percent of its revenues in the US and having strategic partnerships with some of the world’s leading healthcare companies. In December 2002, the World Economic Forum (WEF) selected him as one of their 'Global Leaders for Tomorrow 2003'.
Stoiber also presented him with the highest decoration of the State of Bavaria. Vilsmeier was the youngest recipient of this prestigious decoration at that time. Vita

Michael Wallmeyer

Michael Wallmeyer
 
Co-Founder, NOXXON Pharma AG; Investmentpartner, BellwaldPartner GmbH; Berlin/ Germany
 
Michael Wallmeyer has co-founded and led several companies in the healthcare sector in the past 15 years, including NOXXON. As a partner in Wallmeyer von Wangenheim’s Berlin office he works with small, founder-led enterprises in the areas of biotechnology, medtech, and chemistry. In addition, he serves as Investmentpartner for Life Sciences at BellwaldPartner in Möhlin, Switzerland. He earned a PhD in chemistry and general management at TU Berlin. Vita

Bernd Wegener

Founder and former CEO, B.R.A.H.M.S. AG, Partner, ORGANOBALANCE GmbH, Berlin/Germany
 
Bernd Wegener, a veterinarian, founded and led B.R.A.H.M.S Diagnostica for many years, starting with a management buyout and ending with a successful sale to Thermo Fisher Scientific in 2009. Before that, he was active in various leading and directing roles at Boehringer Ingelheim KG, the Degussa pharmacology group, Marion Merrell Dow GmbH, and Henning Berlin GmbH. He is an active investor and serves on several boards.

Randy Werneth

Founder, President & CEO, Acutus Medical, Serial Entrepreneur, San Diego/ USA and Potsdam/ Germany
 
Randy brings a wealth of device start-up experience with him to Acutus Medical, with his recent experiences including co-founding and running the early stage of Ablation Frontiers (acquired by Medtronic). He has over 20 years of experience in the development of successful medical devices with companies such as Davis+Geck, Medtronic, Micro Therapeutics, Edwards Lifesciences. Randy has also co-founded CryoTherapuetics and Lean Therapeutics. Randy has engineered and/ or managed the design & development of numerous medical technologies and clinical procedures ranging from coronary and peripheral stents, neuro-embolic materials, devices for the detection and treatment of vulnerable plaque and a portfolio of technology for the electrophysiology market.

In addition, he has held various senior level positions in research & development, business development, and manufacturing. Randy currently has over 30 issued patents and received a B.S. degree in Engineering from Arizona State University and a MS from UCLA.

Chuck Wilson

VP Global Head of Strategic Alliances, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research Inc., Basel/ Switzerland.

Chuck Wilson serves as the Global Head of Strategic Alliances, leading a group responsible for research partnering at Novartis. Partnering efforts include academic relationships to understand disease processes, biotech collaborations to access drug discovery technologies, and in-licensing of compounds prior to clinical proof-of-concept. Prior to joining Novartis, Chuck founded and led Archemix, a company focused on aptamer therapeutics. Before moving into industry, Chuck was a professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz where his group determined the first x-ray structures of aptamers bound to their targets. Vita

Wieland Wolf

Wieland Wolf is CEO of ProBioGen since June 14, 2010. Dr. Wieland W. Wolf regards the positioning of ProBioGen as a leading, science driven contract partner for biopharmaceutical development and production within a network of strategic alliances and cooperations as his pre-eminent task. Special emphasis is put on the further exploration of the excellent scientific expertise and the unique technological know-how, to the benefit of ProBioGen's customers.

Constantinos Ziogas

Administrator, SME Office, European Medicines Agency, London/UK
 
Constantinos Ziogas is administrator in the SME Office at the European Medicines Agency. Since joining the EMA in 1996, Constantinos has held several positions, initially as project manager for centralized marketing authorisations applications for biological and new chemical entities. Vita

Pascal Zuta

Pascal currently serves as CEO for Aeria Games Europe GmbH and oversees the European publishing division. He also is a co-founder of arzttermine.de, an online doctor appointment booking service. Prior to joining Aeria Games in summer 2009, Pascal was a Sr. Director Corporate Development for Bertelsmann, Inc in San Francisco. He has several years of experience in entrepreneurialism and leadership in the film and new media industry. In 2006 he founded bloomstreet.net, a venture capital funded online social network. Before that he was a producer and co-founder of Sanktuarium Filmproduction.
Pascal received his MBA at the European Business School Oestrich-Winkel and University of Berkeley in California. He also holds a Doctor's degree in media science from the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen in Babelsberg. Vita

Research Window: Confirmed Speakers

 

Axel Aisenbrey

Head of Healthcare Consulting, Siemens AG, Erlangen

Axel Aisenbrey has been head of healthcare consulting and the clinical competence center, Siemens AG, Erlangen since 2009. He received a Master of Business Administration and Business Informatics from Rotterdam School of Management. Aisenbrey has more than ten years of experience in management consulting in the healthcare industries and in the area of financial services. Vita

Duska Dragun

Professor, Department of Nephrology and Intensive Care Medicine, Charité Medical School, Berlin/Germany

Duska Dragun has been a full professor at the Charité since 2008 and works as attendant at the Department of Nephrology and Intensive Care Medicine at Campus Virchow-Klinikum. She studied medicine in Zagreb, Croatia, until 1993 and received her doctoral degree from Humboldt University in Berlin. She has been awarded many national and international awards and fellowships. She is a member of the Editorial Board of “Transplantation” and has published over 78 peer-reviewed papers including publications in “Cell” and “The New England Journal of Medicine”. Vita

Matthias Endres

Professor and Director, Department of Neurology, Charité Medical School, Berlin/Germany

Matthias Endres is a full professor and director of the department of neurology at the Charité. He was educated at the medical schools of Bochum and Hamburg and held a post-doc position at Mass General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, in Boston. Prof. Endres´main research interests are mechanisms of stroke protection and neurode- and regenerative pathways following cerebral ischemia. He is on the Editorial Board of “J Cereb Blood Flow Metab” and “Stroke”. Vita

Stefan Hesse

Stefan Hesse, Medical Director, Consultant, Neurology Medicine Park, Humboldt Muehle

Stefan Hesse is a board-certified neurologist and psychiatrist. He is medical director of Medical Park Berlin, a 300-bed rehabilitation center including an intensive care unit for neurological, cardiological, and orthopedic patients. The center is affiliated with Charité – Universitaetsmedizin Berlin, where Hesse holds a W2-professorship in neurological rehabilitation. His research career centered on the development and evaluation of new treatment options in neurological rehabilitation, e.g. the neurloytic treatment of spasticity, the treadmill training with partial body weight support and the design of machines and robots to intensify the therapy. Examples are the Gait Trainer GT I, the Haptic Walker, the G-EO for the lower, and the Bi-Manu-Track, Reha-Digit and Reha-Slide for the upper extremity rehabilitation. Numerous controlled trials have established evidence for these particular machines; the start-up companies Reha-Stim, Berlin and Reha-Technology, Switzerland, commercialise these machines worldwide. Stefan Hesse holds shares in both companies.

Guido Junge

Global Program Medical Director R&D, Novartis Pharma AG
 
Guido Junge has been leading the section “transplantation and nephrology” at Novartis since 2007. Through his work at the department of surgery and transplantation at the Charité and his research at institutions like the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg and the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in NYC, he gained extensive experience in translational research. In addition, he is a founding member of the Institute for Leadership Development (ILD) and serves as research supervisor. Vita

Axel Rahmel

Medical Director of Eurotransplant International Foundation
 
Axel Rahmel has been Medical Director of Eurotransplant International Foundation since 2005. After finishing his medical studies at the University of Goettingen, he worked as research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine. In 1992 he started his internal medicine training as a resident at Muenster University Hospital in the department of cardiology and angiology, focusing on all aspects of organ transplantation. From 1997 to 2005 he was responsible for the heart failure and heart transplantation program at the University of Leipzig - Heart Center. During this time he was closely involved in the development and adaptation of thoracic allocation rules as secretary of the respective advisory committee of the German Transplant Society.

Charité Window: Confirmed Speakers

(Organised by Charité Medical School)

 

Ulrich Dirnagl

Chief Executive Director, Center for Stroke Research Berlin, Charité – Universitaetsmedizin Berlin
 
Ulrich’s research is focused on stroke, cerebral blood flow regulation, and brain imaging. In preclinical models as well as clinical trials he explores mechanisms by which brain ischemia leads to cell death, and develops novel methods to intercept mechanisms of damage in acute brain damage, as well as to foster regeneration and repair of the lesions.  At the Charite University Medicine Berlin Ulrich Dirnagl serves as a professor and director of the department of experimental neurology, chief executive director of the Center for Stroke Research Berlin, and program director of the International Graduate Program Medical Neuroscience.

Peter Langkafel

SAP Industry Director Healthcare EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa)
 
Peter Langkafel has gathered experience in healthcare / IT for more than 15 years. He holds an PhD in medicine, a degree of “Medical Informatics”, and an executive MBA (focused on Health Care Management). After his clinical work at a university hospital he conducted a series of IT-Projects in medicine including the project management of national and European research projects. He was cofounder and CEO of a start-up specializing in healthcare IT.

Wolfram von Pannwitz

Head of Business Development, Charité – Universitaetsmedizin Berlin, Managing Director “Charité International Patients” (GDL mbH)
 
Wolfram von Pannwitz started his career as  a Neurologist before he managed the CEO-Board Office at the Charité. After running the financial office of the CharitéCenter for Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry 2006-2008, he assumed the office of business development with focus on Charité spin-offs and strategic industry cooperations on research and development.

Martin Peuker

Vice CIO, Charité – Universitaetsmedizin Berlin
 
Martin Peuker has been working in healthcare for more than 10 years. He is responsible to ensure alignment of new IT strategy as the Deputy CIO of Charité. Martin Peuker is one of the leading data warehouse experts for medical environments. Due to his efforts, a new data warehouse was developed at Charité. He is also overseeing the development and implementation of the new clinical information system. Mr. Peuker established the new IT-strategy corresponding to ITIL aspects. This concept serves as a prototype for other large hospitals. Before joining Charité, Mr. Peuker worked for the consulting company Mummert & Partner. There, he implemented new reporting and controlling structures into hospitals.

Hartmut Ruetten

Head Translational Medicine, R&D Diabetes Division, Sanofi-Aventis
 
Hartmut Ruetten has been working for Sanofi-Aventis since 1996 in different positions. Since 2010 he has been head of translational medicine in the R&D Diabetes Division. He received his degree in medicine from the University of Cologne. Besides a medical doctorate he holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Oxford Brookes. Before he began his career in the industrial sector, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the ‘William Harvey Research Institute’ (WHRI) at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Axel Wehmeier

Axel Wehmeier, Head of the Connected Health Care strategic business area

After completing his studies in economics and business management at the University of Texas and the University of Cologne, Axel Wehmeier, born in 1966, worked first as a research associate at the University of Cologne’s Department of Economics. In 1998 he earned his doctorate and continued his career as a pricing officer with Deutsche Telekom AG. From 2002 he focused initially on regulatory economics, group pricing and regulatory strategies as head of the company’s regulatory strategies and principles department and Telecommunications Bill project manager until taking over as head of the T-Mobile CEO’s operating office in 2004. From December 2006 until June 2010 he was in charge of Deutsche Telekom AG CEO René Obermann’s corporate office. In June 2010 he switched to T-Systems as Head of the Connected Health Care strategic business area.