2008: Co-founder and CEO of NanoTemper GmbH.
2012: German Innovation Award.
2014: German Founders Award.
2015: CAPITAL Top 40 under 40.
2019: Bundeswirtschaftssenat.

www.linkedin.com/in/philipp-baaske/

"The big mistake of technology transfer: selling off our technologies & StartUps."

Anna is a trained bioinformatician and was heading the Analytics Chapter in Roche Pharma Research and Early Development. She is now leading the global Chapter Integrated Clinical Domain in Roche Information Solutions. Her teams were supporting preclinical and clinical research teams through data analysis, particularly using artificial intelligence methods and developing novel algorithms for direct application in healthcare. The teams analyze high-dimensional data such as image data, genomic information, text data, data from electronic health records, or sensor data to better understand diseases and develop personalized therapies.
Anna holds a doctorate in bioinformatics and biomedical informatics from the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona and a master's degree in bioinformatics from the Ludwig Maximilians University and the Technical University of Munich. She completed her postdoctoral training at the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Stanford University in the USA. She has been working at Roche in pharmaceutical research and development since 2013.

www.linkedin.com/in/anna-bauer-mehren-97025719

"Artificial intelligence has been on everybody's mind since ChatGPT. It is not a new topic for us in pharmaceutical research and development. We have been using artificial intelligence in many areas for many years. What is new is the increase in high-quality data, the ability to train models, and the expertise to advance new models. We see our task as identifying the right areas of application for research and development in order to bring new, innovative medications to patients more quickly. Access to patient data is very important here, unfortunately access to such data remains very difficult, especially in Germany, and we are dependent on other countries."

Dr. Eduardo Beltrán, a trailblazer in human data science, focuses on neuroimmunology and immuno-oncology. With a global perspective, he adeptly navigates diverse healthcare landscapes, embracing regulatory changes to foster innovation. Dr. Beltrán's expertise lies in merging research excellence with regulatory adaptability, driving RWD partnerships for impactful insights. www.linkedin.com/in/eduardo-beltr%C3%A1n-64ab7739/

Dr Viola Bronsema has been Secretary General and CEO of BIO Deutschland, Germany’s Biotechnology Industry Association, since 2006. With its allmost 400 corporate members, the sector association represents Germany’s innovative biotechnology enterprises and corporations. Viola is member of the Board of Directors with Curevac SE and NV since August 2020 and member of Council on Technological Sovereignty of the Federal Research Ministry.
Previously, Viola was Head of Communications of Roche Diagnostics GmbH and of Roche Diagnostics Europe, Middle East, Africa. Parallel to that function she was Managing Director of the public private partnership Stadtmarketing Mannheim GmbH, in an honorary appointment for several years. From 2000 to 2002, she was spokeswoman and head of press and public relations at Lilly Pharma Holding GmbH.
Viola earned her Ph.D. at the Centre for Molecular Biology (ZMBH) at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, where she did research on hepatitis B-viruses and also bacterial pathogens before she started training to become a Public Relations specialist in 1995. Her carrier in communications started at a health care consultancy in Frankfurt am Main where she was a Senior Consultant working i. e. with Genentech and Serono. After that she worked as editor and spokesperson in the press office of the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ).

www.linkedin.com/in/viola-bronsema-aa899816/

“Our biotech start-ups are and will remain the key driver for innovation – we need them for a healthy ecosystem that spans the entire value-added chain. Let’s work on making bioscience-based entrepreneurship more attractive in Germany”

Demonstrated history of creating and connecting networks of venture capital funds in US and Europe, with 17 years’ experience in DACH countries. Founder of Hub Angel Investment Group, working out of our seventh fund. Consulted with hundreds of entrepreneurs in creating companies, commercializing technology, scaling businesses and entering new markets. Global business development professional skilled in Management Strategy, Marketing, and Raising Capital. Worked in 40+ countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America. Based in Boston, Massachusetts.

www.linkedin.com/in/charliecameron

Anna Chrisman is the President of Informa’s Life Sciences business, which includes market leading brands such as EBD Group, BIO-Europe, partneringONE, Biotech Week Boston, TIDES and BioProcess International. Throughout her career, Anna has worked with a large variety of stakeholders along the drug development value chain from early stage innovators to commercial players. Through a global suite of highly acclaimed events, Anna and her team facilitate strategic connections that drive life science dealmaking.
Anna has previously held event production and management positions at EBD Group, the leading partnering firm for Life Sciences, before Informa acquired EBD in 2013. Prior to joining EBD Group in 2007, Anna was a producer at Euroforum in Germany where she was responsible for the company's flagship conferences in the German healthcare sector. Anna started her career at the German-Korean Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Seoul, Korea. She lives with her family in Southern California and is an avid runner and triathlete.

Chris is a computer scientist turned bioinformatician with a passion for systematically modelling biological mechanisms through machine learning. His path towards reaching this goal led him to contribute and push the community of learned protein sequence representations in order to find new, principled ways to describe biological entities. Bio-sequence representation learning, for instance through transformer models, is today an established field in bioinformatics with flourishing frameworks and impactful research applications, like the prediction of protein 3D structure from just an input sequence. Chris remains focused on trying to address problems for which data and intuition remain scarce, for instance those allowing to design new proteins with therapeutic or industrial use.

www.linkedin.com/in/sacdallago

"AI and NVIDIA accelerate drug discovery, transforming genomics and molecular biology for faster, cost-effective therapeutics development."

After completion of his training in pharmaceutical science, Philippe started his career holding various functions in R&D, manufacturing and quality in Europe and abroad in pharmaceutical companies (Ethypharm, Novartis, SkyePharma). He has decades of experience as an entrepreneur founding, investing or managing several biotech and medtech startups where he initiated and executed private and public strategic transactions.
Prior to joining Adjuvant Capital in 2020, Philippe served as CBO and director at Themis Bioscience GmbH, an Austrian viral vaccine company (acquired by Merck and Co US) and was CEO and Director of GlycoVaxyn AG, a Swiss bacterial vaccine development company acquired by GSK in 2015. He previously served at Endoart S.A. (Switzerland), a medtech company, as CEO and Chairman of the Board through a successful turnaround leading to its acquisition by Allergan Plc in 2007 and was member of the founding team at Axovan AG, a GPCR biotech which was acquired by Actelion (Switzerland, acquired by J&J).
Philippe owns a PharmD and an MBA and currently serves on the board of Luciole Medical AG, Memo Therapeutics AG, Scenic Biotech B.V. and Limmatech Biologics AG.

Dean is a leading patent strategist in the life sciences sector who works with biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies at all stages of development. His clients range from start-ups, to mid-size pharmas with NCEs entering clinical trials, to large companies with vast patent portfolios. Dean’s years working in the industry and two decades in patent law position him as a strategic partner for his clients. He helps them understand the risks and opportunities associated with various approaches to protecting their innovations and helps them develop and implement strategies centered on their business goals. Dean handles patent procurement, portfolio management, IP due diligence, and opinions including freedom-to-operate, validity, and patentability assessments in the areas of chemistry, pharmaceuticals, and biotechnology. With deep experience in business, chemistry, and IP law, he understands the business risks and complexities facing companies in the biopharmaceutical sector in ways that others lacking his unique combination of perspectives cannot — and leverages his exceptional insight to help clients navigate IP risks and shifting industry challenges.

www.linkedin.com/in/deanfarmer/

"How can life science start ups efficiently and successfully navigate from science project to a preclinical/clinically attractive investment target - with a reasonable goal for regulatory approval - in this competitive environment?"

Dr. Tilman Flock leads Life Science Engagements at Palantir Technologies, focusing on innovative data strategies and digital transformation specialized in biomedical R&D and biomanufacturing. His expertise bridges biomedical research with AI and digital technologies. He brings a decade of academic experience in computational and experimental biotechnology, contributing to high-impact journals, before transitioning into the tech industry six years ago.
Earlier in his career, Dr. Flock was a Junior Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge and ETH Zurich, after earning his PhD in Computational Biology at the University of Cambridge, where he was associated with the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Trinity College. His research was recognized with the Max Perutz Award. Dr. Flock's pivotal moment to transition into AI and computational research occurred during his Master’s studies with Prof. Frances Arnold at the California Institute of Technology, where he augmented experimental protein engineering with computational predictions. He completed his undergraduate studies in Molecular Biotechnologies at the Technical University of Munich, specialising in Biophysics, Molecular Medicine, and Synthetic Biology.

www.linkedin.com/in/tilman-flock/

"Hype vs. Impact: GenAI's true potential in drug discovery requires seamless integration of companies' data, tools, and knowledge to operationalise real-world workflows that drive transformative outcomes.”

Philipp Gerbert is CEO of the TUM Venture Labs, a start-up factory in deep-tech and life sciences founded jointly by TUM and UnternehmerTUM. The TUM Venture Labs are a unique fully integrated network across 12 megamarkets/technology fields, providing domain-specific entrepreneurial support combined with leading edge methodologies.
Previously Philipp Gerbert served for 15 years as a Senior Partner of the Boston Consulting Group, focusing on AI in Business and Climate Tech, as well as Innovation across many technology-driven industries on both sides of the Atlantic. He also lived for many years in Silicon Valley, working with The McKenna Group and bringing new technologies to market.
By background Philipp Gerbert is a physicist. He holds a Master from the Max-Planck Institute/LMU Munich and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, USA. He also worked for several years as a researcher at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA).

www.linkedin.com/in/philippgerbert/

"The confluence of life sciences with artificial intelligence and quantum engineering breeds novel solutions and business models that incumbent companies are unprepared for, but which a fully connected entrepreneurial/research ecosystem can incubate."

• Tobias Gotthardt was born on June 3, 1977 in Regensburg and grew up in Burglengenfeld and Kallmünz.
•After completing his high school education and studying political science in Regensburg and Freiburg, he initially worked as a parliamentary assistant and head of office in the European Parliament and the German Bundestag.
• After his election to the Bavarian State Parliament in 2018, he assumed the chairmanship of the Committee for Federal and European Affairs. In addition, in 2021, he was appointed as deputy and then acting chairman of the Committee of Education and Culture. At the same time, he was the federal, European, education and youth policy spokesman of the FREIE WÄHLER parliamentary group.
• After his re-election, Tobias Gotthardt was appointed State Secretary and member of the Bavarian State Government in 2023.

Ulrich Granzer, PhD. is an independent consultant for drug development and regulatory affairs. He is owner and CEO of a consultancy company focusing on all aspects of drug development and regulatory affairs globally with a special emphasis on novel and orphan drugs.
He has a track record of working on more than 300 new molecular entities in the US, Europe and other areas of the world.

www.linkedin.com/in/ulrich-granzer-b26396/

"Are we ready for AI? What is AI in drug research and drug development? Do we have validated tools to find, describe, develop, approve and launch drugs using AI?
Do we have more questions or more answers when using AI?
Do we need less or more scientists in drug research and development when AI tools are coming into the game to keep the industry alive?"

Selina obtained her medical degree at the Charité University Hospital in Berlin, and started her professional career at the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) Center for Regenerative Therapies with a doctoral thesis on the expansion and differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem cells. Subsequently, she worked as an assistant physician at the Institute of Pathology of the Charité University Hospital before moving to Bioscience Valuation, a life science consultancy, where she performed commercial assessments and valuations of early- and late-stage assets and advised clients on their R&D strategy. After completing her MBA at the Cambridge Judge Business School, Selina pivoted into the world of Venture Capital; she currently works as a Life Science Associate at Oxford Science Enterprises, where she identifies new investment opportunities, creates new biotech businesses, and supports the existing portfolio.
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/selina-greuel-335a71216/

Dr. Stella Grosso is the Product Owner of Biostatistics at Leukocare AG. Her background includes research in experimental cognitive neuroscience at LMU Munich in Germany. Since joining Leukocare in 2019, she established and led the data automation and standardisation of laboratory analytic assays during formulation development for viruses, proteins, and small molecules. Her work focuses on advanced statistical methodologies applied to drug product optimization.

www.linkedin.com/in/stellagrosso/

Dietmar Harhoff is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition and Professor for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich. His research focuses on innovation, entrepreneurship, intellectual property, industrial economics, and economic policy.
Before assuming his current position at the Max Planck Institute, he was Full Professor and Director of the Institute for Innovation Research, Technology Management and Entrepreneurship at LMU Munich (1998–2013). From 2001 to 2019, he established and ran the LMU Entrepreneurship Center together with partners from business and industry. In 2010, Dietmar Harhoff co-founded the German Accelerator Program. He has also co-founded start-ups and is a seed investor in young firms. He has served in advisory functions to private and public organizations at various times. From 2007 to 2019, he was Chairman of the Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation (EFI), which presents annual reports on research, innovation and technological performance to the German Chancellor. In 2019, he was appointed chair of the Commission for the establishment of the German Agency for Disruptive Innovation (SPRIND). He is now member of the SPRIND supervisory board.
Dietmar Harhoff is elected member of the German Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech), the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BAdW).
de.linkedin.com/in/dietmar-harhoff-40811b

"Some progress has been made – ever so slowly - in improving boundary conditions for life sciences and biotech innovation in Germany. The keynote summarizes next steps that need to be achieved for Germany to live up to its potential."

Johann Hawe is a Staff Bioinformatics scientist at Illumina's AI Lab. Having roots in web- and software development, he studied bioinformatics at the TU and LMU Munich before pursuing his PhD at the Institute of Computational Biology at Helmholtz Munich. Here, he focused on unravelling the mechanisms underlying gene regulation and human disease through the integration of multi-omics data using machine learning. During his postdoctoral research period at the German Heart Centre in Munich, he applied his expertise in research and software development in light of the DigiMed Bayern project and helped in establishing the 'DigiMed Bayern Secure Cloud'. In 2022, Johann joined Illumina's AI Lab, excited to use his experience to work towards Illumina's mission: to improve human health by unlocking the power of the genome.

www.linkedin.com/in/johann-hawe-3a5800a8/

"We strive to leverage the tremendous capabilities of AI and Deep Learning to unveil the effects of every possible variant in the human genome."

Ralf Huss, MD, PhD is currently managing director of the BioM Biotech Cluster Development GmbH in Planegg near Munich. Until the end of 2022, he was the founding Director of the Institute of Digital Medicine (IDM) and Professor of Pathology and Molecular Diagnostics at the University Hospital in Augsburg, Germany. 

Before joining the Medical faculty in Augsburg in 2020, Dr. Huss spent many years in the pharmaceutical and diagnostic industry at Roche and AstraZeneca as Global Head of Histopathology and Tissue Biomarker, also developing image-based algorithms to predict therapy response based on the application of machine intelligence.  

He also founded some biotech enterprises, held appointments as Adjunct professor at the Institute of Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest, Winston Salem (NC), and is still lecturer on “Biomaterials and Bioresponsive Polymers” at the Faculty of Chemistry, Technical University Munich, Germany. Dr. Huss is also honorary professor at Systems Biology Ireland, University College Dublin. In his almost 30 years in academic and industrial research, Dr. Huss authored more than 180 papers on cancer and stem cell research as well as the use on artificial intelligence in digital medicine.

Dr. Alexander Jarasch is Technical Consultant for Pharma and Life Sciences at Neo4j - the world's leading graph database
With a background in bioinformatics, his career extends across several industries, including chemistry, biotech, pharma and IT. He has expertise in machine learning and data engineering, combined with his deep domain knowledge in pharma.
In his previous roles, Alexander has been the Head of Data and Knowledge Management at the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD). He has received numerous awards for the innovative use of advance analytics’ techniques such as “Knowledge Graph” to combat widespread diseases, such as diabetes.

www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderjarasch

"Knowledge graphs connect diverse pharmaceutical data, ground GenAI applications and enable advanced analytics and personalised healthcare solutions."

Roman joined Google in late 2021. He is responsible for articulating the value and transformative potential of Google’s offerings, in particular Cloud and AI/ML capabilities, and shaping strategic partnerships with Life Sciences organizations across EMEA.
In the 20 years prior to joining Google, Roman worked as CTO, quantum computing industry lead, global account executive and enterprise architect in Life Sciences and other industries.
Because he did not have the courage to become a musician, he holds a Ph.D. in High Energy Physics. His research at CERN contributed to the discovery of the Quark-Gluon Plasma and the Higgs Boson.

www.linkedin.com/in/roman-malina

Alphabet is deeply invested on AI for life sciences: From contributing AlphaFold to the world (a protein structure AI) to building skin condition search into Google Lens, from technical foundations like TensorFlow and AI-hardware to concepts and methods for unbiased and explainable AI, from Google’s investment portfolio’s focus on life sciences to the recent founding of a new AI-based drug discovery company, Isomorphic Labs. But where will AI have the biggest benefit for health? Understanding disease biology? Finding the next molecule? Making more clinical trials successful? Or matching the best treatment to a patient? And how will AI do that? Will it be a source of knowledge or a source of inspiration, a research assistant or a quality control? “Prediction is difficult, especially if it’s about the future” - so let’s all co-create the future!

Carsten Marr is the founding director of the Institute of AI for Health at Helmholtz Munich, a European centre for applied artificial intelligence. With his group he develops AI-based methods to improve the diagnosis, treatment and understanding of severe blood diseases.
After studying theoretical physics at the Technical University of Munich and completing his diploma thesis at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Carsten switched from physics to theoretical biology. His PhD thesis at Technical University of Darmstadt focused on the architecture of biological networks and was awarded the best of its year in the Department of Biology. After postdoctoral research stays in Munich, Bremen and Edinburgh, he started his research group at the Helmholtz Munich in 2013 and became deputy head of the Institute of Computational Biology. In interdisciplinary projects with experimentalists, biomedical experts, and clinicians, he pioneered the training of deep neural networks on life science data for the prediction of stem cell decisions from microscopic images and the identification of leukemia from blood and bone marrow smears. He has received several awards for his research and analysis of single cell data as well as an ERC Consolidator Grant for the training of AI models for the automated analysis of blood diseases. His goal is to use AI to improve the health and lives of patients.

www.linkedin.com/in/carsten-marr-0bb5ba167/

“Interdisciplinary teams between computational researches and biomedical and clinical experts are key for progress in health AI.”

Henrik Matthies is CEO & co-founder of Honic, Germanys leading real world data research platform. Prior tot hat, he served as managing director of the health innovation hub (hih) of the Federal Ministry of Health. Henrik is a serial entrepreneur, pioneered with Mimi Hearing Technologies digital health in Germany. He holds a Ph.D. from RWTH Aachen University and graduated from WHU Otto-Beisheim School of Management.

www.linkedin.com/in/henrikmatthies/

"Germany has a global reputation for data privacy, not yet for data use. This may change in the next few years, for good."

Kei W. Müller studied mechanical engineering at TUM with a scholarship of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, specialized in numerical biomechanics, and did his PhD at the Institute for Computational Mechanics with Prof. Wolfgang A. Wall. He received the Award of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering for his dissertation on modeling and simulation of the self-assembly and mechanics of intracellular protein fiber networks.
After a two-year postdoc in numerical methods development and high-performance computing at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, he returned to Germany to co-found Ebenbuild, which creates AI & physics-based digital twins of the lungs, and has been its CEO since.
www.linkedin.com/in/kei-wieland-mueller/

"Keys are great but often they don’t fit so a lockpick comes in handy. And then you realize the door was jammed anyways, so you find a battering ram or a window of opportunity."

Before co-founding deepeye Medical as CEO, Manuel Opitz studied industrial & bioengineering at RWTH Aachen and Trinity College Dublin (MSc). After corporate experiences in technology scouting and operations management in Germany, China and Switzerland, he pursued postgraduate studies in economics at the trinational CDI in Paris (MBA). After a year as a patent broker for medical technologies, he founded his first own startup Mecuris as CEO & COO. Overall, he raised more than 10mio€ for several medtech startups as a consultant and founder, lead teams of more than 30 people and hired over 100 healthtech changemakers. In today’s role as CEO of deepeye, he analyses healthcare processes and uses digital technologies like AI to empower physicians to better serve their patients. As a regular speaker at healthcare & startup conferences, he aims to bridge the gap between digital technologies and clinical practice to individualise patient care.

www.linkedin.com/in/manuelopitz/

"The biggest pharma need that digitalization can solve is neither (AI-based) drug discovery nor (decentralized) clinical trials. At $520bn, improving patient adherence is by far the biggest opportunity."

PD Dr. med. Dominik Pförringer is a certified Orthopedic and trauma surgeon, holding an MBA from INSEAD. He is academic director of the TUM Venture Lab Healthcare as well as founder and conductor of the annual Digital Health Summit (www.DigitalHealthSummit.de ) taking place in November in Munich at the TranslaTUM.

www.linkedin.com/in/dpfoerringer/

"AI will support professionals in the biotechnology sector as a smart co-pilot. Redundant tedious data processing tasks will be enhanced and accelerated. It will enable scientists to focus on their deeply intellectual as well as creative tasks. No smart head will be replaced but simply enhanced and his work catalyzed by deep learning and AI."

since Jan 2015 Munich Leukemia Laboratory
Senior Specialist Hematology
Coordination of diagnostic workflows
External consulting
Research (Genetics, AI/machine learning)
Head of cytomorphology department (since May 2019)
Member of Management Board (since Jan 2017)
Strategic Business Development
Head of Customer Care/CRM (since Jan 2020)
Jan 2013 – Dec 2014 St. Hedwig-Hospital Berlin
Senior Physician
Head of Department Hematology + Oncology
Jan 2007 – Dec 2012 University Hospital Muenster
Specialist Internal Medicine, Specialist Hematology/Oncology
Jan 2004 – Dec 2006 University Hospital Essen, West German Cancer Center Intern/assistant physician Research associate
Jan 2000 – Jan 2003 4CastSystems GmbH
Junior Consultant (Investment Research Biotechnology)
de.linkedin.com/in/dr-christian-pohlkamp-a2539115a

"Doctors have always been expected to have the highest level of expertise and precision. But knowledge and complexity are increasing dramatically. Medical work without AI assistants will no longer be conceivable in the future."

Christina is the CEO of 2NA FISH, a pre-seed startup developing novel cancer diagnostics for making better therapy decisions. She's a molecular biologist by training, and an entrepreneur at heart. After finishing her PhD in RNA and adipose tissue biology at the Helmholtz Center Munich in 2017, she realized that entrepreneurship lets her provide value to the world more directly than staying in academia. She started 2NA FISH at the LMU in 2020, has since raised more than 1.5 million € in non-dilutive grants and built a team of 6 at 2NA FISH. There, she and her team are working on shifting the paradigm for more data-driven therapy decisions in cancer treatment.

www.linkedin.com/in/chport/

"The biggest potential of AI in biotechnology is mutual synergy."

www.linkedin.com/in/sidhyansh-saxena-9245a952/

Dr Julia Schaft holds a PhD in biology and completed her doctorate at the Justus Liebig University Giessen and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) Heidelberg in 2002. Julia initially worked in the research department of an in vitro fertilisation clinic in Sydney Australia with human embryonic stem cells, but then moved into increasingly responsible management positions in which she both led scientific projects and worked in the field of legislative and ethical research regulation. In 2016, Julia joined BioRN as a project manager, led BMBF-funded internationalisation projects and played a key role in the strategic realignment of the BioRN Cluster.
Since 2018 Julia is Managing Director of BioRN, managing a network of key innovation stakeholders and advancing the Rhine-Neckar-region into one of the worlds leading life science clusters.
Julia was appointed to the supervisory board of WMT Therapeutics, a start-up in the field of oncology, and to the supervisory board of the European Funding Consortium EIT Health. Julia has been the spokesperson for the Council of German BioRegions since 2023.

Dr. Simon Sonntag holds a Ph.D. in Medical Engineering and has over 15 years of experience in computer-aided simulation for cardiovascular medical device development and regulatory processes. In 2019, he co-founded Virtonomy and currently serves as its CEO, a company specializing in virtual clinical trials using digital patient models powered by AI and multi-physics simulations to accelerate medical device development. Additionally, he is a board member of several societies and associations, including the European Society of Artificial Organs.

www.linkedin.com/in/simon-sonntag/

"Clinical trials are being revolutionized by data and AI, improving precision and efficiency through advanced simulations and data-driven models, transforming patient care and medical product development."

Joanna combines technical expertise in biotechnology with her business acumen in strategy and innovation. She is a Principal at Hitachi Ventures, where she oversees startup investments in healthcare. Previously, she worked in the biotech and pharma consulting at PwC. Prior to that, she was responsible for strategy, R&D and innovation management in the fields of healthcare IT, diagnostics, precision medicine at Konica Minolta. She holds a PhD in biochemistry and postdoctoral training in genetics and oncology.

www.linkedin.com/in/joanna-soroka-phd-52409149/

Dr. Ariel Dora Stern is the Alexander von Humboldt Professor for Digital Health, Economics and Policy at the Hasso Plattner Institute. Her research focuses on technology management and innovation in health care, using methods from econometrics and data science to study the regulation, strategy, and economics of health care, with a focus on emerging health care technologies and delivery modalities.

linkedin.com/in/arieldora

“We have inherited from the last century a set of institutions for biomedical R&D and regulation that were not designed with today’s most promising new technologies in mind—and AI is one of the settings where this becomes especially salient and where policy updates will be needed.”

Dr. Mark Teese is the Product Owner of Bioinformatics at Leukocare AG. He holds a PhD in Chemistry from the Australian National University. His prior roles include group leader in biochemistry and data science at the University of Münster and Technical University of Munich, as well as experience in software consultancy at TNG Technology GmbH. At Leukocare, he guides product development in digitalization, data-science and machine-learning.

www.linkedin.com/in/markteese/

"Shifting from experience and eminence to big data and evidence will soon shift therapies from one-size-fits-all to patient individual therapies with improved reported patient outcome."

Linkedin Jörg Traub

Dr. Friedrich von Bohlen und Halbach is co-founder and CEO of Molecular Health GmbH. He holds a diploma in biochemistry from the University of Zurich and a PhD in neurobiology from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. After various positions at Fresenius AG, FAG Kugelfischer KGaA and WASAG Chemie AG he co-founded LION bioscience AG in 1997 which CEO he was until 2003. From 2004 until 2022 he managed the biotech investments of the SAP co-founder Dietmar Hopp and his family as co-founder and managing director.
He is chairman of the board of Apogenix AG as well as board member of Heidelberg Pharma AG. He is also chairman of InnoSource Ventures AG, Zurich und member of the advisory board of the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering, Geneva, and of the board of trustees of the Max-Planck-Institute for Medical Research, Heidelberg.

www.linkedin.com/in/friedrich-von-bohlen-0121582

"No transformation asks for readiness. The question is not so much ‘Are we ready for AI’ but rather: ‘Is our mindset ready for change’. Germany does not have a deep and broad change mentality."

Joanna Wardzinski heads Global Partnerships and Strategic Programs in Healthcare. She focuses on fostering partnerships and building channel capacity to enable access and delivery of person centered care and improved healthcare outcomes through the digitization and use of healthcare data. She is also responsible for overseeing key strategic global initiatives (e.g. workforce development). Joanna's journey with AWS began in 2017, where she initially oversaw strategic planning and investment for AWS EMEA Public Sector. During this period, she co-developed the healthcare vertical's business case, subsequently transitioning to lay the groundwork for the practice on an international scale. Joanna has been in the digital technology field since 2014, leveraging her INSEAD MBA as a launch pad to a career dedicated to Tech for Good. Her prior roles at Microsoft and in the Canadian federal government ranged from amendments to the Investment Canada Act to organizing Commercial Missions to India. Joanna is a dual citizen of Canada and Poland, has lived in 7 different countries, and currently resides in Germany.

"In today's healthcare landscape, the key to unlocking the full potential of personalized health lies in the effective utilization of data. However, up to 97% of health data often remains inaccessible due to siloes or challenges in data formats."

Justus has almost a decade of Digital Health and AI work experience with insurance, pharma and medtech companies internationally and conducted his PhD at the chair of Experimental Bioinformatics at the Technical University Munich about AI implementation in healthcare. A special focus area is AI for major disease areas as for example Diabetes.

“Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare has its breakthrough in Germany with the newly published laws under the umbrella of the EHDS”

Dr Thomas Wostry is an experienced laywer and researcher specialising in implementations of artificial intelligence in healthcare and biotechnology as well as in medical law, corporate criminal law, and compliance. He earned a PhD in Law (summa cum laude) from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) and possesses about five years of expertise in constructing AI models and AI-based systems for legal and medical applications for both practical and pedagogical deployment. Dr Wostry presently serves as Partner at Ratajczak & Partner Rechtsanwälte law firm, based in Essen and Duisburg, Germany, where he advises clients on both the development and introduction of AI-based medical products and on legal compliance issues in the healthcare field. Since 2016, he has been a Postdoctoral Researcher at HHU, conducting research at the intersection of medical law, AI in healthcare, corporate criminal law, and compliance. Additionally, he was the CPOC and Educator for the AWS Academy at HHU from 2021-2022, instructing law students in cloud infrastructure and machine learning. Dr Wostry obtained his law qualifications from the Universities of Konstanz and Düsseldorf, graduating with First and Second State Examinations. During his legal studies, he received a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung). Concurrently with his scientific work at HHU and legal work at the aforementioned firm, Thomas Wostry has also been studying Computer Science at FernUniversität Hagen since 2019.

linkedin.com/in/dr-thomas-wostry

„As AI becomes a central factor in biotech, upcoming EU regulations and national laws will require a strong AI strategy and competent support to handle new legal challenges.“

Mehmet Yigitsoy is an expert in image processing, computer vision, and artificial intelligence, having earned his PhD degree from the Technical University of Munich (TUM). He currently leads the AI labs team at deepc GmbH, overseeing academic collaboration projects and focusing on AI orchestration, evaluation, business intelligence, and NLP. Mehmet has also contributed to advancements in healthcare technology at various healthcare companies including Konica Minolta, Carl Zeiss Meditec, and Definiens, specializing in developing AI and image processing algorithms. His work is characterized by interdisciplinary collaboration and a commitment to advancing healthcare technology, underscored by numerous publications in leading scientific journals.

www.linkedin.com/in/yigitsoy/

"AI is pivotal for enhancing patient care, yet integrating and operationalizing it presents significant challenges. Platforms are essential for facilitating scalable AI integration, benefiting both vendors and healthcare providers by streamlining deployment and optimizing patient outcomes."