Meet the Scientific Advisory Board

Ronald Kempers is the CEO and CFO of Mymetics Corporation, an earlystage vaccine development company, as well as an adviser for several start-up and scaleup companies. He predicts that 2023 will be an exciting year in the fields of AI and virtual reality, and is inspired by new technologies and innovations that disrupt the status quo and open up fresh business opportunities.

Vincent Ossipow is a Partner at Omega Funds – a venture capital firm investing in healthcare from Geneva and Boston – and is passionate about the intersection of innovative science and its practical applications for the general population. In his role, he has been involved with companies that have brought almost 50 new products to market and he hopes to continue investing in emerging talents and biomedical research start-ups in the year ahead.

Andy Oates is Dean of the School of Life Sciences at EPFL and directs the Timing, Oscillations, Patterns laboratory at the Institute of Bioengineering in Lausanne. His key professional interests lie in developmental biology, biological timing and pattern formation, and he was responsible for the discovery of a Doppler effect in an embryo – an all-time career highlight.

Tanja Dowe is the CEO of the Debiopharm Innovation Fund, the corporate venture capital arm of the Debiopharm Group, where she has worked for the past six years. In her role, she has built a strong digital health portfolio and plans to keep expanding with new investments in the year ahead – helping the start-ups in her care to reach their next value inflection and rolling out some exciting new plans for the future.

Nicolas Mermod is a Professor Emeritus at UNIL, specialising in Molecular Biotechnology and Genetics, with a particular focus on medical applications. He is driven by a desire to understand human life and will be taking a particularly keen interest in the fields of epigenetic analysis, nextgeneration DNA sequencing and gene therapy in 2023.

Stefan Kohler is the Innovation Deputy at the CHUV medical directorate in Lausanne exploring new ideas at the interface of healthcare and cutting-edge science. His main focus is on medical technologies, largely in the device and digital space, and he is committed to helping as many CHUV healthcare professionals as possible to advance their innovative ideas in the months and years ahead.

Philippe Renaud is a scientific adviser and Professor Emeritus at EPFL, where he conducts research into microtechnology, medtech and microfluidic systems. He is inspired by scientific discovery, passionate about the transfer of knowledge from academics to commercial companies and looks forward to seeing what developments 2023 brings in the area of microphysiological systems.

Michelle Scott is Vice President and Head of Discovery and Biotechnology Solutions at Labcorp, a large drug and device development services company. Michelle and her team help biotech companies, at the earliest stages of drug development, to translate their scientific ingenuity into transformative patient therapies. As a founder of one of Labcorp’s Women’s Enterprise Networks she is passionate about mentoring, encouraging and enabling women to achieve their full potential and fulfil their ambitions.

Katrin Siebenbuerger Hacki is a Director at Medows

Sàrl, a boutique consultancy for the medtech and life sciences industry worldwide. She enjoys working with a range of interesting start-ups, scale-ups and multinational clients and is looking forward to helping more clients reach commercial success and expand the value of their innovations to healthcare markets around the world, inspired by her passion for bringing strategic sales and marketing capabilities to the Swiss start-up scene.