Speakers
Find out more about the 18th Annual Anglonordic Life Science Conference speakers below.
Director, Ezenze
Hakan Goker
Managing Director, M Ventures
Hakan Goker, PhD, is Managing Director of M Ventures and heads the Biotechnology investments covering Healthcare and Life Sciences. Hakan joined M Ventures in 2013 and has been investing in the sector for 15 years. Previously, Hakan was a partner at Aescap Venture investing in European opportunities.
Hakan started his investment career at Atlas Venture where he was part of the investment team in London focusing on global investment opportunities in healthcare and medical technologies across US, Europe and Asia. He was instrumental in the creation and financing, business and R&D strategies of multiple companies in their formation years including Orphazyme, Bicycle, Nimbus Discovery, and f-Star while at Aescap and Atlas.
Hakan continues his active investing role and represents M Ventures on multiple portfolio companies. He comes from an academic background receiving his Ph.D. in oncology from the Institute of Cancer Research/ University of London, UK and continuing his scientific career with post doctoral work at the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Centre/Royal Marsden Hospital. He gained his B.Sc. Hons, from University College London. Hakan is based in Amsterdam at the M Ventures head office.
Mary Clark
Managing Director, Optimum Strategic Communications
Mary has a 20-year successful track record in providing strategic corporate and financial communications to both early- and late-stage healthcare companies.
She has run several high profile PR campaigns and has been instrumental in assisting companies with strategic positioning and fundraising rounds from seed and private financings through IPOs, reverse mergers, as well as numerous follow-on public financings.
Mary has worked with over 100 healthcare clients across Europe and the US including Teva Pharmaceutical, Bayer, Fresenius Medical Care, Kite Pharmaceuticals, UDG Healthcare, Evotec and BioNTech.
Mary has built and led healthcare businesses at several international PR&IR agencies. She started her career at BTG plc where she was involved in the Company’s IPO and the start-up of several new tech and biotech companies.
Gil Bar-Nahum
Managing Director, Jefferies
Dr. Gil Bar-Nahum is a Managing Director and EMEA Head of Biotechnology in the Global Healthcare Investment Banking Group at Jefferies and is based in London. He leads the team with a primary focus on innovative companies in Europe and Israel. Dr. Bar-Nahum has over 20 years of investment banking experience and has executed transactions for biotechnology, pharmaceutical, medical technology, and life science tools companies. In the last several years, Dr. Bar-Nahum has led the execution of more than 60 financings, including 30+ IPOs for foreign private issuers (on NASDAQ), raising more than US$5.0Bn. Since joining Jefferies in 2009, Dr Bar-Nahum has also advised on more than a dozen cross-border M&A transactions including the Advising Vaccibody on their recent partnership with Genentech for approx. $700m. From 2002-2009 Dr. Bar-Nahum was part of UBS Investment Bank's Global Healthcare Group, based primarily in the US. Prior to that, Dr. Bar-Nahum worked as an Equity Research Analyst for UBS where he served as an Associate Director covering companies in the Life Science Tools and Biotechnology space. Dr. Bar-Nahum received his PhD in Basic Medical Sciences from the Department of Biochemistry at the Sackler Institute of New York University School of Medicine. The subject of Dr. Bar-Nahum's doctorate work was published twice in the journal Cell. Dr. Bar-Nahum also received an MS from New York University’s School of Medicine in Cell and Molecular Biology and a BS from the University of Illinois in Microbiology.
Stephen Hansen
Associate Editor, BioCentury
Stephen is BioCentury’s Associate Editor in the U.K., where he serves as one of the company’s primary points of contact with European companies and investors. Stephen has covered clinical development, corporate strategy and finance in Europe, the U.S. and China for BioCentury for over a decade and is a frequent contributor to BioCentury’s quarterly Financial Markets Preview and annual Buyside View and European Finance reports. He holds B.A.s in Biology and History from Bethel University and an M.Phil. in History from Oxford University.
Roel Bulthuis
Managing Partner & Head of Healthcare Investment, INKEF Capital
Roel Bulthuis is a Managing Partner and head of the Healthcare investment team at INKEF. Roel combines more than 15 years of experience across venture capital, pharma business development and investment banking.
Prior to joining INKEF he served as an SVP and Managing Director of M-Ventures which he created and developed into a leading CVC fund. Prior to that, he served in senior positions in global business development at Merck Serono and in the investment banking team at Fortis Bank.
Roel is a Kauffman Fellow and passionate about continuously challenging the status quo. Roel holds a Msc. in Biopharmaceutical Sciences from Leiden University and an MBA in Finance from the Helsinki School of Economics.
Henrijette Richter
Managing Partner, Sofinnova Partners
Henrijette joined Sofinnova in 2014, and her investments and board involvements include Mozart Therapeutics, Muna Therapeutics, Nitrase Therapeutics, Nodthera, Twentyeight-Seven Therapeutics, Asceneuron, Delinia (sold to Celgene), and iOmx Therapeutics.
Henrijette was attracted by Sofinnova Partners’ focus on a positive, consensus-oriented environment and its philosophy of investing in people. “Everyone needs to agree. An individual’s success is everyone's success,” she says. “And when there's a failure, it's everyone's failure — that fosters different conversations when you consider potential investments.”
Prior to Sofinnova, Henrijette was part of the team that founded Novo Seeds in 2007, and as an Investment Director, she was instrumental in the creation, financing and building of companies such as Orphazyme (ORPHA.CO; ORPH), Avilex Pharma, EpiTherapeutics (sold to Gilead), and Lysogene (LYS, Euronext Paris).
Henrijette holds a combined Ph.D. and Industrial Scientist degree in Molecular Biology from the University of Copenhagen and Novo Nordisk A/S. She did her postdoctoral fellowship at the MIT Center for Cancer Research in Massachusetts.
Søren Møller
Managing Partner, Novo Holdings
Søren joined Novo A/S in 2011 as Managing Investment Director of Novo Seeds.
Søren obtained his MSc degree from the Technical University of Denmark in 1993 and his PhD degree in molecular biology in 1997 from the Technical University of Denmark. In addition, Søren has academic training as postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Prior to joining Novo Seeds, Søren served as global manager of Genomics at Novozymes. Before Novozymes, Søren was CSO and Vice President of R&D at Exiqon A/S. During Søren’s tenure, Exiqon completed an IPO and the company was acquired by Qiagen in 2016. Previously, Søren worked in cancer drug development as head of Lead Identification at BioImage and as research scientist at Novo Nordisk.
Søren serves on the Board of Directors of EpiTherapeutics (sold to Gilead), AMRA, Biosyntia, Reapplix and Northsea Therapeutics. Since 2008, Søren has been board member of Danish Biotech (the Association of Biotechnology Industries in Denmark) and DVCA (Danish Venture Capital Association).
Marten Steen
Managing Partner, HealthCap
Prior to re-joining HealthCap as a partner in 2010, Dr. Steen worked with global business development at Merck Serono as a Director, focusing on both product and technology licensing. Prior to Merck Serono, he was a medical associate with HealthCap.
Dr. Steen is a Medical Doctor trained at Lund University. He has pursued research in the field of protein chemistry and coagulation at Lund University and Novo Nordisk, rendering him a PhD in Clinical Chemistry in 2003. He is the author of 16 scientific papers published in peer-reviewed journals. He has also a B.Sc. degree in Business Administration from the Lund University School of Economics and Management.
Mike Ward
Global Head of Life Sciences & Healthcare Thought Leadership, Clarivate
Mike Ward serves as Global Head of Life Sciences & Healthcare Thought Leadership, Clarivate. As both an award-winning journalist and analyst, Mike has been writing, analyzing and commenting on the life sciences industry for more than 35 years. He has held editorial and content leadership roles at various publications and organizations across the industry.
Carolyn Porter
CEO, CytoSeek
Carolyn brings 20 years of leadership experience from a career spanning start-up, biotech and pharma companies. In the start-up arena she led the formation of 16 companies raising £52M cumulatively in seed financing while in a previous role at Oxford University.
Carolyn has also held Board positions in several biotech companies. Prior to joining CytoSeek in January 2020 Carolyn was Chief Business Officer of OxStem Ltd, a biotech developing therapies targeting stem cells. She has also held senior Business Development roles in large pharma (Novartis) and biotech (Chiron) companies working on in/out licensing transactions, acquisitions and strategic alliances with deal values in excess of $1bn.
Carolyn’s previous career included working in Corporate Finance at Ernst & Young and as a post-doctoral researcher in Oxford University. She has an MBA from Warwick University and a PhD in Immunology from Trinity College Dublin.
Georg Büchner
Group Chief Business Officer, Helsinn
Joined Helsinn in 2019 with over 15 years’ experience in the life science industry, ranging from start-ups to multi-national biopharma companies.
Leading knowledge and expertise in M&A, licensing, alliance management, strategy and venture capital funding.
Holds an MBA from The University of Cambridge and PhD in Molecular and Developmental Biology from Kings College London
Michel de Baar
Executive Director, BD&L Europe, MSD
Michel is a business development and licensing professional with experience in all steps of business development and transaction processes within the global pharmaceutical, biotechnology and diagnostics industries. Michel is a scientist by training, specialised in infectious diseases, with an emphasis on virology. In addition to a PhD in molecular virology from the University of Amsterdam, he also holds an MBA from Rotterdam School of Management at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. Michel joined the Global Business Development & Licensing (BD&L) team of MSD after having had various BD&L roles at a diverse range of biotech companies and research institutes. The goal for the BD&L team is to augment the pipeline for MSD. Within the team, Michel is responsible for Search and Evaluation of opportunities in Europe and the Middle East in the therapeutic areas of Infectious Diseases & Vaccines; Cardiometabolic, Respiratory & Ophthalmology; and Immunology.
Catherine Moukheibir
Non Executive Board Member
Ms. Moukheibir most recently served as chief executive officer of MedDay Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company that focused on nervous system disorders, from July 2019 to January 2021. She was also the chairman of the board of directors of MedDay from April 2016 to January 2021. Prior to that, Ms. Moukheibir served as the senior advisor for finance and a member of the executive board of directors at Innate Pharma SA, an oncology company, from 2011 to December 2016, and as the chief financial officer for Movetis N.V. from 2008 to 2010, when it was acquired.
Ms. Moukheibir previously served as the director of capital markets for Zeltia Group S.A. from 2001 to 2007. Ms. Moukheibir currently serves on the board of directors and chairs the audit committee of Orphazyme A/S, Ironwood Pharmaceuticals and CMR Surgical. She also held past directorships on the boards of directors of Ablynx NV, Cerenis Therapeutics SA, Creabilis S.A., GenKyoTex S.A., Kymab Group Ltd and Zealand Pharma A/S.
Ms. Moukheibir has an M.A. in economics and an M.B.A. from Yale University. Ms. Moukheibir’s long leadership career in the biopharmaceutical industry, as well as her deep background in international finance, provide her with valuable business and financial expertise in support of our corporate objectives.
Deborah Spencer, MBA
Innovation & Business Partnerships Manager; University Lead, UK Industrial Strategy, University of Oxford
Deborah has a bachelor’s degree from the University of London, an E*MBA from Copenhagen Business School, a MSC from the University of Edinburgh and a PhD from Dundee Business School focused on Life Sciences Intermediaries. While in Denmark Deborah worked for PwC and was a founding member of the newly created Environmental Management Unit focused on Green Accounting.
Deborah is responsible for developing activities under the Industrial/Innovation Strategy across the University of Oxford and is Deputy Head of the Innovation & Business Partnerships Team where she engages with industry to build strategic partnerships that leverage academic research strengths. She previously worked at the Oxford Local Enterprise Partnership (OxLEP) as the Life Sciences specialist for the Region and helped to establish the Health Tec Cluster at the Harwell Science Campus as part of her remit. Deborah has also worked in senior positions at the Universities of Edinburgh and Dundee, and for a couple of the UK Research Councils. While in Edinburgh, she led on the establishment of a new genomics centre. She has also been involved in three company spinouts and in the creation of two fee- for- service entities from the university base. In Oxford she helped spearhead the funding for the £30m Nucleic Acid Therapies Accelerator (NATA) and helped to facilitate Brazil in joining the Oxford vaccine efforts. Many of those from the sector will know her from her leadership of the BioDundee cluster organisation, a hugely successful not-for-profit. Deborah has many connections with national and international leaders from industry, the investment community, academia, intermediaries and government organisations.
Ralph Lindemann
Global Head, Translational & Biomarker Research, TIP Oncology & Imkmunooncology, Merck
Ralph is a biochemist by training and has been involved in cancer research for more than 20 years. Following postdoctoral training at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia and research studies at German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Ralph joined Merck Oncology R&D in 2008 and held various roles, most recently Head, Strategy and Alliances in Oncology & Immunology Discovery. He led Mercks Cancer Metabolism program and with co-workers, conceptualized and completed fundraising for IMMUcan, one of Europes largest immunooncology profiling consortia. Ralph has been a long-standing collaborator of the Merck Ventures team and was CSO on-assignment for a Merck Venture portfolio company.
Steven Powell
CEO, eTheRNA
Steven is a Ph.D. microbiologist with Large Cap Pharma experience. He was a former CEO of both public and private biotech companies. He was previously a partner at Glide Healthcare Partners.
Stefan Lohmer
CEO, Axxam
Stefan Lohmer is a co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Axxam, as well as Board Member of Rewind Therapeutics NV. Prior to founding Axxam, he was head of the assay development unit at the Bayer Research Centre in Milan and the Head of Genomics worldwide for Bayer AG. He was responsible for generating and managing Bayer’s external genomic alliances with Millennium and Lion Bioscience. Stefan Lohmer joined Bayer in 1992. He holds a degree in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the University of Cologne and completed his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding in Cologne.
Gary Howes
Counsel, McDermott Will & Emery
Gary Howes has nearly 25 years of experience advising clients in the life sciences sector on the myriad legal issues
that affect this key industry. Gary advises clients on industry specific commercial contracts, patent licensing
agreements, alliances, collaborations and technology transfers, IP and regulatory matters and product acquisitions
and disposals.
Gary’s clients include private and public biotech companies and pharmaceuticals ranging in size and scope from
start-ups to established, multinational corporations. He also represents academic and research institutions and
serves as a trusted advisor to in-house general counsel and senior executives.
Gary draws on his extensive background to help life sciences clients develop and implement strategies that balance
industry-specific laws, competitive pressures and best practices with broader legal, regulatory and market
developments. Gary speaks regularly at prominent industry events, having served as a presenter, panelist and
moderator at conferences and symposia across Europe and North America.
Gary also advises on intellectual property, including copyright and designs, know-how, inventions and patents, and
trade marks, in industries such as publishing, retail, architecture, sportswear, IT, and life sciences.
He counsels clients on protection (such as existence and retention of rights, analysis of “chain of title”, contractual
arrangements to perfect and maintain ownership, etc.) and exploitation (licencing, and assignment, as well as
analysis of non-infringing behaviour/action).
Prior to joining McDermott, Gary was a Partner at an international law firm, where he founded the firm’s life
sciences industry group.
Arvin Abraham
Partner, McDermott Will & Emery
Arvin Abraham focuses his practice on corporate transactions for private equity sponsors and venture capital funds, with a particular focus on the life sciences sector, including the areas of pharma, medical devices and med-tech. On the venture side, his practice focuses on investor side representation and his clients include several leading venture capital funds and corporate venture arms, who he generally represents on complex cross-border venture transactions. Arvin also serves as the Europe representative on McDermott’s global venture capital steering committee and is dual qualified as an English solicitor and an attorney in New York.
Alan Watt
Chief Scientific Officer, NodThera
Alan has over 30 years of experience in drug discovery and development in both the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors. His previous roles include serving as vice president of therapeutics at Bicycle Therapeutics, as chief operating officer and executive vice president of R&D at Trident Pharmaceuticals, and as chief executive officer of Xenovium. Alan formerly led inflammasome discovery at GlaxoSmithKline, where he established the Pattern Recognition Receptor Discovery Performance Unit within GSK’s Immuno-Inflammation Centre of Excellence for Drug Discovery (CEDD). He also previously served as head of drug metabolism and in vivo pharmacology at Merck. Alan holds a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from the University of Southampton, a Ph.D. in drug metabolism from the University of Hertfordshire and an MBA from the Open Business School. He has over 50 peer-reviewed scientific publications.
Hugh Nuthall
Senior Director, Search & Evaluation - Neuroscience, Eli Lilly and Company
Highly experienced drug discovery scientist with a demonstrated record of success working in the pharmaceuticals industry. Experienced leader of neuroscience drug discovery programs and multidisciplinary teams. Focused on internal and external innovation for neurodegenerative diseases. Developed research & drug discovery partnerships with Academic, Biotechnology and Charity sectors. Strong research professional skilled in Neuroscience, Biochemistry, Biotechnology, Molecular Biology, In Vitro, In Vivo, and Drug Discovery.
Rob Pinnock
Dir. External Innovation, Biogen
Oliver Rausche
Chief Scientific Officer, STORM Therapeutics
Oliver has overall responsibility for developing STORM’s target discovery platform and for the delivery of small molecule drugs from its emerging drug discovery pipeline. Oliver worked closely with scientific founders Professors Tony Kouzarides and Eric Miska to secure the initial £12m series A investment that launched STORM, and subsequently joined the company full time in October 2016.
Prior to STORM, Oliver was Programme Director at the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), where he led the Translational Research Partnerships (TRPs) initiative and other industry-focused collaboration programmes in experimental medicine and early drug development. He served as Vice President Biology at Cellzome until the company’s acquisition by GSK in 2012, and as Director of Biology at UCB Pharma until 2008.
Oliver has over 15 years’ drug discovery experience in inflammation, neurology and oncology. He holds a degree in Biochemistry from the Free University Berlin and a PhD in Biochemistry and Cell Biology from the Institute of Cancer Research in London.
Maria Teresa Ferretti
Co-Founder & Chief Scientific Officer, Women's Brain Health
Dr. Maria Teresa Ferretti is a neuroimmunologist, science advocate and external teacher at the Medical University of Vienna with over 10 years of international experience in the field of Alzheimer’s disease and a unique expertise on sex and gender differences. She has a Master in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from the University of Cagliari and obtained a PhD in Pharmacology and Therapeutics at McGill University (Montreal, Canada). Dr. Ferretti worked at Nitsch’s lab at the University of Zurich (Switzerland) as postdoc and group leader on the role of the immune system in Alzheimer’s. 2016, Maria Teresa co-founded the non-profit organization called ‘Women’s Brain Project’ (WBP), that studies sex- and gender-sensitive precision medicine for brain and mental diseases (e.g. Alzheimers, migraine, depression). Her work as WBP Chief Scientific Officer has led to several scientific publications in leading journals including Nature, Science and PNAS, three TED-x talks, and coverage by both the national (Sonntagszeitung, SwissInfo, NZZ, Le Temps) and the international press (including BBC, The Independent, Sciences et Avenir, Financial Times, La Stampa, ELLE Italy). As WBP Chief Scientific Officer she is a sought-after speaker, and gives regular talks, lectures and presentation, both at scientific and lay public meetings. She is a faculty member of the Course for Advance Studies (CAS) on gender medicine at University of Zurich (Switzerland) and the editor of the book ‘Sex differences in Alzheimer’s Disease’ published by Elsevier.
