Chairman of the board, Biobix UGent, Belgium
Prof Wim Van Criekinge, Ph.D.
Prof. Van Criekinge graduated in 1994 as a Chemical Engineer from the University of Ghent, Belgium, where he earned his PhD in Molecular Biology in 1998. Today he is part-time Professor at the same university where he is head of the laboratory for computational genomics and bioinformatics (Biobix) in the department of molecular biotechnology (BW14). He is founding partner of NXT-GNT, a next generation sequencing facility and board member of N2N (nucleotides 2 networks), a multidisciplanary platform grouping systems biology expertise at the university of Gent. In 1997 he was co-founder and director of Devgen, a biotechnology company which had a successful IPO in June 2005. He worked as a consultant for the government (iHealth) and various biotech companies and started the companies Bioinformatrix and Genohm in 2002. Professor Van Criekinge is VP Science & Technology at MDx-Health which had a succesful IPO in June 2006.
Board Member, CEO Genohm, Switzerland
ir. Frederik Decouttere
Frederik Decouttere received his degree as a Master in Bioscience Engineering at the University of Gent in Belgium. He focused on applying & evolving software architecture and patterns in the field of bio-informatics during the past 12 years. Since 2002, Frederik acted as CTO for Genohm, for which he has served and deployed bioinformatics and LIMS solutions for several fortune-500 life sciences companies, healthcare and R&D labs. In 2010, Frederik was appointed as the new CEO of Genohm.
Board Member, EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland
Prof. Bart Deplancke, Ph.D.
Prof. Deplancke obtained his Master’s degree in biochemical engineering at Ghent University. He then performed a PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA) where he studied the role of environmental factors in the etiology of intestinal cancer. During his post-doctoral studies initially at Harvard medical School (Boston) and later at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (Worcester, USA), he developed a novel method to map the gene regulatory interactions underlying specific biological processes in multicellular organisms, work that was published in the top scientific journal Cell. This powerful, now patented method has wide applicability and is bound to play a major role in the unraveling of system-specific gene regulatory networks in health and disease. In 2007, Prof. Deplancke joined the Institute of Bioengineering at the prestigious “Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne” (EPFL), one of the premier universities in Europe, as a tenure track Assistant Professor where he continues his work on solving the genomic regulatory code as well as on exploiting genetic variation to understand phenotypic diversity.
Board Member, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Prof. Michael Hengartner
Michael O. Hengartner grew up in Canada, where he obtained in 1988 a BSc in Biochemistry from the Université Laval in Québec. After his PhD studies with Nobel laureate H. Robert Horvitz at MIT, Michael led for seven years a research group at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. In 2001, he was recruited to the University of Zurich (UZH) as the first occupant of the newly established Ernst Hadorn chair in molecular biology. Michael obtained an MBA from IMD in Lausanne in 2008. Since 2009, he is dean of the Faculty of Science at UZH. Michael is a fellow of the AAAS, a member of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina, and a recipient of the Swiss National Latsis Prize. Michael is a co-founder of the biotechnology company Devgen and a co-founder and board member of the scientific evaluation and due diligence company Evaluescience.
Board Member, CFO Genohm, United Kingdom
ir. Jan Van den Berghe
Jan Van den Berghe holds a Master in Bioscience Engineering at the University of Gent, with additional degrees from Vlerick Management School and Insead. He has a long and varied career in strategy and financial management and has been involved in numerous startups, buyouts and acquisitions. Jan is the Chairman of Oystershell NV, product development company for nutraceuticals and OTC medicines.