Speakers

Michael joined Venture Investments in November 2020. 

From 2006-2020, Michael was employed at Genmab in various positions with increasing responsibility; starting in Project Management taking daratumumab / DARZALEX® into the clinic. Between 2010-2018 he led Clinical Development and was part of the senior leadership team that repositioned and rebuilt the company into a global cancer and antibody powerhouse. From 2018 he led R&D Operations preparing the company for filing of its first own product. Prior to Genmab, Michael worked as Associate at BankInvest Biomedical Venture and as Licensing Associate in Scientific Licensing at Novo Nordisk A/S, after having spent 7 years as Research Scientist at Novo Nordisk A/S covering areas such as endocrinology, metabolic disease, cancer and inflammation. 

Before joining the industry, Michael worked for 6 years at the Research Centre for Developmental Medicine & Biology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, investigating causes and possible treatment modalities of intra-uterine growth restriction. 

Michael earned a Masters (Dipl. Ing. agr.) in Agricultural Science from the University of Stuttgart-Hohenheim, Germany and a Ph.D. in Agricultural Science – summa cum laude – from the University of Göttingen, Germany. 

Prof. Dr. Thomas Brück
Technical University of Munich
(*1972) obtained his B.Sc.in Chemistry, Biochemistry and Management Science from Keele University, Stoke on Trent, U.K.. Additionally, he holds an M.Sc. in Molecular Medicine from the same institution. In 2002, Thomas obtained his Ph.D. in Protein Biochemistry from Imperial College and Greenwich University, London, U.K.. From 2002-2006 Dr. Brück held an Assistance Professorship in Marine Proteomics and Biocatalysis at the Center of Excellence for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine at Florida Atlantic University (Boca Raton, U.S.A.), focusing on bioactive natural product biosynthesis in marine macroorganisms. In 2006 Thomas Brück returned to Germany and joined Süd-Chemie AG (now Clariant Produkte Deutschland GmbH), where he held various management positions in the central R&D unit Biotechnology. Since 2011 Thomas Brück is a tenured full Professur at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany. He holds the Werner Siemens Chair of Synthetic Biotechnology and is Director of the TUM AlgaeTech Center. The research activities of his Chair are focused around the isolation and development of sustainable biocatalytic processes, that enable conversion of greenhouse gases and biogenic residue streams into value adding products for the food, chemical and pharmaceutical industry sector. Prof. Brück is the current Vice Dean Research and Innovation of the TUM School of Natural Sciences and a member of the German Academy of Technical Sciences, where he advises the German Government.

Prof. Dr. Ali Maximilian Ertürk is Director at Helmholtz Munich and Professor at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He is the founder and CEO of Deep Piction, a company pioneering whole-body, cell-level imaging combined with AI to transform disease understanding and accelerate drug development.

His work focuses on developing technologies that enable the visualization and analysis of intact biological systems at single-cell resolution, bridging the gap between fundamental research and therapeutic innovation. His research has been published in leading journals including Cell, Nature, Nature and Biotechnology, and he is actively driving the translation of advanced imaging and AI into precision medicine applications.

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Elisabeth Harbich joined BioM in January 2025 as a project manager in Start-up Support. She is involved in start-up activities at BioM like mentoring programs, bootcamps, and pitching events.

Elisabeth studied bioengineering (Munich University of Applied Sciences) and biochemistry (LMU Munich). She previously worked in process development at Micromet/Amgen, coordinating cell line development, generating monoclonal eukaryotic antibodies, and preparing regulatory documentation for clinical trial submissions, including managing an external service provider.

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Dmitrij Hristodorov is General Partner at Forbion. His current portfolio covers various stages, treatment modalities and disease areas. To date, he serves as a board member for Progentos, RyCarma, Complement, Seamless, AAVantgarde, Kynexis, Beacon, and Mosanna. He previously served as a board observer of VectorY Therapeutics, as a board observer and R&D committee member of Gyroscope Therapeutics that was acquired for up to $1.5Bn by Novartis in December 2021, as a board director of Rampart Bio, and as a board director of Oxular that was acquired by Regeneron in 2025.

Before joining Forbion, he held roles in R&D Ophthalmology and Business Development at Bayer Pharma.

In 2013 he received his PhD degree summa cum laude from the University of Aachen (RWTH) for the work he performed at Fraunhofer Institute in immunology.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-dmitrij-hristodorov-b8896080/

Prof. Dr. med. Dr. h.c. Ralf Huss

Managing Director of Bio^M Biotech Development GmbH and spokesperson for the Bavarian Biotechnology Cluster

Ralf Huss completed his medical studies with a doctorate in immunology at Friedrich-Alexander University (FAU) in Erlangen-Nuremberg. After research stays in Zurich (Switzerland) and Seattle (USA), he became a specialist in pathology and adjunct professor at Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich; at the same time, he was an honorary professor at University College Dublin (Ireland) and finally a lecturer in biomaterials at the Faculty of Chemistry (School of Natural Sciences) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). After working for Roche and small to medium-sized companies in the field of biotechnology and digital diagnostics, his focus as a visiting professor at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem (USA) was on topics related to regenerative medicine and the use of genetically modified stem cells in the treatment of numerous diseases. In recent years, his research interests have increasingly expanded to include the application of data and AI in clinical and biopharmaceutical research and the entire field of ‘digital medicine’. He is a member of numerous national and international professional associations, advisory boards and curatorial boards.

On 1 January 2023, Prof. Huss took over as managing director of BioM Biotech Cluster Development GmbH, which has been the network organisation for the biotechnology industry in Munich and Bavaria since 1997.

Dr. med. Kai Joachimsen, MD, MBA
General Manager BPI e.V.

Licensed and PhD-qualified physician as well as a certified business economist.
He completed his medical studies in Marburg, Münster, and Vienna. His experimental doctoral thesis was in radiology and cardiology (magnetic resonance imaging in cardiomyopathies).
He received his Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Northwestern University Kellogg in Chicago and WHU in Vallendar.
He held senior positions in the pharmaceutical industry at GlaxoWellcome/GSK as Head of Marketing & Business Team Respiratory, was Head of Respiratory & Cardiovascular at Boehringer Ingelheim, and also served as Business Unit Leader, Head of New Commercial Model, EMEAC Franchise Leader, and Global Franchise Leader at MSD/Merck Inc. in Munich and New Jersey. In 2012, he took over the sole management of Chiesi GmbH Germany and additionally as CEO in the private equity sector.
Since 2018, he has been with BPI e.V. and since 2019, he has been serving as Chief Executive Officer and member of the board.

Prof. Dr. Simon N. Jacob
Technical University of Munich, TUM School of Medicine and Health

Prof. Jacob (b. 1977) is a neurologist and neurophysiologist. His research focusses on the cellular and circuit basis of cognitive brain functions. Based on his experimental work, Prof. Jacob is developing technologies that can contribute to improving treatments for disorders in the domains of perception, memory and language.

Prof. Jacob studied medicine in Freiburg and Heidelberg, at University College London (UK) and at Harvard University (USA) as a fellow of the German National Academic Foundation. He obtained his medical doctorate degree in 2006 based on experimental neurophysiological work conducted at Yale University (USA). Prof. Jacob was a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Integrative Neuroscience in Tübingen and qualified as a board-certified neurologist after training in Tübingen and at the Charité in Berlin. In 2015, Prof. Jacob moved to TUM where he established an interdisciplinary research group investigating the neuronal mechanisms of cognitive brain functions. He was appointed professor for Translational Neurotechnology in 2019.

Awards

• ERC Consolidator Grant (2024)
• Early Excellence Academy, SyNergy Cluster for Systems Neurology (2023)
• Speaker TUM Innovation Network NEUROTECH (2021-2026)
• ERC Starting Grant (2017)
• Charité Clinical Scientist Award (2014)

Susanne Kreutz is the Global Head of Corporate & Business Development. She held various other positions at Novartis since she joined in 2019, including Head of Business Development & Licensing for Oncology and Global Head of Mergers & Acquisitions. 

Susanne has close to 20 years of deep and broad transactional experience in BD&L and M&A gained in the pharmaceutical industry across various therapeutic areas. Prior to joining Novartis, she had an impactful career at Bayer, where she worked in local, regional, and global functions of increasing responsibility in both the commercial organization, as well as M&A and BD&L. 

Susanne is a pharmacist by training and holds a Doctorate degree in Neuropharmacology from the Goethe University in Frankfurt.

Olivier Litzka has served since 2006 as a partner at Andera Partners, a venture capital and private equity firm based in Paris with offices in Munich, Antwerp, Madrid and Milano. Together with his colleagues, he developed out of Paris the Andera Life Sciences activity to one of the major funds in Europe supporting entrepreneurs and companies in the biopharmaceutical and medical device space, before he opened the office in Munich in 2021.

He started his business career in 1998 with Mercer Management Consulting before joining 3i Group plc in 2000 with a focus on biopharma and medtech investments. 

Olivier Litzka currently serves on the boards of several European and US life sciences companies and was instrumental in the support of many startups up until their respective acquisitions and/or IPOs. 

Olivier Litzka has a Ph.D. in molecular microbiology from the Institut für Genetik und Mikrobiologie in Munich, LMU.

Matthias Meergans, MD, PhD, MSc.

• Executive Director, Research and Development at Association of Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies (vfa)
• 20 years of experience in global pharmaceutical companies across Medicine, R&D, and Marketing, holding local and international roles.
• Lecturer at the Goethe Business School/Frankfurt (Pharma MBA)
• Board Certificate in Internal Medicine; Master of Science (MSc) in Pharmaceutical Medicine
• Studied Medicine in Berlin and Tübingen

Olivia Merkel has been a Professor of Drug Delivery at LMU Munich since 2015, Chair since 2022, and Vice-Director of the Department of Pharmacy since 2024. She is a Registered Pharmacist, received a MS (2006) and a PhD (2009) in Pharmaceutical Technology as well as numerous awards, including an ERC Starting Grant, ERC Proof-of-Concept Grant, and ERC Consolidator Grant, the APV Research Award and the Carl-Wilhelm-Scheele-Award. Merkel is the co-spokesperson for the BMBF Future Cluster CNAT-M and an author of over 150 articles and book chapters. She served as NIH reviewer from 2014-2015, SNSF reviewer from 2018-2022, is an Editorial Board member for JCR, EJPB, Molecular Pharmaceutics and other journals, Associate Editor for DDTR and WIREs Nanomedicine and Nanobiotechnology, was the President of the German Controlled Release Society in 2020 and the Chair of the CRS Focus Group on Transdermal and Mucosal Delivery from 2020-2022, and currently is a scientific advisory board member of Coriolis Pharma, AMW, and Corden Pharma as well as a co-founder of RNhale. Her research focuses mainly on RNA formulation and pulmonary delivery for the treatment of a variety of lung diseases.

Simon Moroney 

is currently Vice-chair of Novartis AG and Chair of the Belgian AgTech company Biotalys. Until 2019 he was CEO of MorphoSys AG, having co-founded the company in 1992. From 1984-86 he worked for ImmunoGen Inc in Boston. Prior to starting his career in the industry he held academic positions at the University of Cambridge, UK, the ETH Zurich, Switzerland and University of British Columbia, Canada. He obtained his D.Phil in chemistry from the University of Oxford on a Commonwealth Scholarship and his M.Sc in his native New Zealand.

He has received numerous rewards for his services to the biotechnology industry including the Bundesverdienstkreuz am Bande (2004), New Zealand’s World Class New Zealand Award for Biotechnology (2006), and State Medal for Outstanding Services to the Bavarian Economy (2009) and the Most Significant Contribution to the Mediscience Sector; European Mediscience Awards, (2019).

Dr. Jörg Radtke has been Managing Director of Servier Forschung und Pharma-Entwicklung GmbH since January 2025. He joined Servier in November 2002 as a Clinical Research Associate andsubsequently held positions as a Clinical Trials Project Manager and, from 2011, as Head of Clinical Operations for the DACH region and Benelux. Following an 18-month assignment in Worldwide Regulatory Affairs, he is now responsible for coordinating clinical research activities across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Prior to joining Servier, he spent six years as a research associate at the Chair of Nutrition at TUM Weihenstephan.
www.linkedin.com/in/dr-jörg-radtke

Carsten Rudolph, CEO and co-founder of Ethris, pharmacist by training, received his PhD from the Department of Pharmacy of the FU Berlin. His deep expertise is delivering mRNA specifically to the lungs. He is lead inventor of the SNIM® RNA-Technology and co-inventor of 15 patents/applications and has authored more than 120 scientific publications. Carsten Rudolph received his post-doctoral lecture qualification at the Department of Pharmacy, FU Berlin in 2009.

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Max works with Google Cloud customers to realize their AI ambitions. As the Director for Customer Engineering for AI in EMEA, he leads Google's teams of expert AI engineers in the region in deploying the Gemini model family, Gemini Enterprise and Vertex AI, as well as Google Cloud's AI infrastructure offerings. Besides his role at Google, Max is also the co-lead for the AI in Women's Health research group at TUM University Hospital in Munich, where he and his team work on  improving treatment outcomes for patients with rare gynecological tumors through AI for clinical decision support systems and patient digital twins. 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxtsc/ 

Philip Tinnefeld is Director of the Department of Chemistry and Chair of Physical Chemistry at LMU Munich. He leads an interdisciplinary research group in the fields of super-resolution microscopy, DNA nanotechnology, and biosensor technology with a focus on method development. More recently, he has combined single-molecule detection with DNA nanotechnology to develop self-assembling functional components, biosensors, and nanorobots. In addition to more than 200 peer-reviewed publications, he is involved in 12 patent applications and is the initiator of GATTAquant, the first company for applications of DNA origami technology.

linkedin.com/in/philip-tinnefeld-476242170

Dr. Angelika Vlachou has been investing venture capital in biotech, pharma and life science start-ups for over 10 years. Over the course of her career, she has managed many transactions ranging from seed-stage venture capital and growth financing to licensing agreements, trade sale transactions and IPOs. Her expertise is also based on her virology-molecular biology research experience. One of her strengths is to combine scientific innovation with commercial potential. She is a valued sparring partner for founders, investors and stakeholders. With a doctorate in biology, she started her professional career in investment banking.

I hold a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Tübingen and a postgraduate degree in Economics, earning the title of Diplom-Wirtschaftschemiker. After completing my doctoral studies, I began my career at a biotech start-up specializing in drug delivery technologies. In 2001, I moved from the start-up sector to the investment sector and joined Bayern Kapital GmbH. While I was initially responsible for investments across various industries and at various stages of development, I now serve as Director Life Sciences, focusing on investments in innovative Life Science start-ups from the seed to scale-up stages.

Dr. Alissa Zeller studied chemistry and material science at the TUM and in Heidelberg. She holds a postdoc in Bioethics from Max-Planck and is a patent attorney.
She leads BASF’s global Intellectual Property and Regulatory organization with global responsibility for patents, trademarks, collaboration agreements, IP‑related M&A, and litigation. She also serves as Chair of the BDI Committee on Intellectual Property and Copyright.