Professor Robin Offord died on March 11, 2021. A very sad news and a great loss for the biomedical research and the biotech ecosystem of Geneva area.            Robin chaired the scientific and economic board of Foundation Eclosion from the beginning to December 2020. More than 50 entrepreneurs have started their projects at Eclosion thanks the relevant scientific advice and the great entrepreneurial vision of Robin. He was the scientific keystone of the Foundation Eclosion, we all miss him bitterly.

Oliver Hartley is an associate professor at the Faculty of medicine, University of Geneva.  In 1997 he completed a PhD in protein engineering with Sir Gregory Winter, a Nobel laureate (2018) and serial entrepreneur. Subsequently, Oliver has worked at the University of Geneva, mainly focusing on discovering and optimizing chemokine analogs as new medicines. This work has led to a series of high-profile publications and new intellectual property. In 2005 he co-founded the Mintaka Foundation for Medical Research (www.mintakafoundation.org) as Chief Scientific Officer, in order to translate his anti-HIV chemokine analog work from the lab to the clinic. Mintaka successfully raised approximately $10 million in non-profit funding and used these resources to successfully complete preclinical work for the lead molecule, 5P12-RANTES, which has now been acquired for further development by Orion Biotechnology (www.orionbiotechnology.com, for whom Oliver has worked since 2019 as VP for Drug Discovery), and will enter a first clinical study in 2019.

Denis Hochstrasser is a practising internist and clinical chemist. He manages the clinical pathology department and the central clinical chemistry and biological examination laboratories at Geneva’s university hospitals, supervises the computational activities of the medicine faculty at Geneva University, and runs a leading international multidisciplinary research group in proteomics. Prof. Hochstrasser cofounded the Institut Suisse de Bioinformatique, GeneBio SA, and Geneprot Inc.

Karl-Heinz Krause is Professor of Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine & University Hospitals of Geneva, as well as honorary professor at the Bejing Hospital, China. He received his MD from the Ludwig-Maximilian University (Munich) in 1982. From 1982 to 1989, he received clinical training in internal medicine and infectious diseases at the Universities of Munich, Geneva and Iowa. Starting in 1984, Prof. Krause has been actively involved in inflammation research. Since 1998, he has focused his research further on mechanisms of aging and treatment of age-associated diseases, in particular on the NOX family of NADPH oxidases as a pathophysiologically important source of oxygen radicals. He is an elected member of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences and the American Society for Clinical Investigation

Jean-Yves Le Cotonnec obtained a bachelor’s degree in engineering, a doctorate in medicine and a master’s in statistics in Paris. For 14 years, he occupied senior positions in the pharmaceutical industry, including posts at Novartis and Serono. In 1995 he founded Triskel Integrated Services SA, a company that defines and implements strategies to develop and register medical products in Europe and the USA, working in strategic cooperation with traditional contract research and manufacturing organisations. He has been involved in the development and registration of over ten drugs, including several blockbusters.

Frédéric Levy  and his team manage the Evaluation of innovative therapeutics at Debiopharm International SA in Lausanne, Switzerland. He obtained his doctoral degree in biochemistry at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden and spent several years as a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He moved then to Switzerland to take a position at the Lausanne Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, where he successively awarded a Young Investigator Award of the Cancer Insitute, a Professorship of the Swiss National Funds, an Associate Membership of the Ludwig Institute and an Associate Professorship of the University of Lausanne. His area of expertise is drug development in oncology, immunology and infectious diseases. During his career, Frédéric was Vice President of the Swiss Society of Biochemistry, Board Member of the Platform Biology of the Swiss Academy of Science, jury member of the Friedrich Miescher Award and Board Member of the FEBS.

Andrew Parker has a Ph.D. from the National Institute for Medical Research (UK), carried out post-doctoral studies at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (USA) and completed an MBA with Warwick Business School (UK). He has published more than 25 peer-reviewed scientific papers in renowned international journals. Andrew  has twenty years of experience in drug discovery and early clinical development within pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors.  Actually, he is CSO at Zealand Pharma

Dr Sausen is the Vice President and Head of Early Phase Development Solutions (EPDS) and has served in this capacity since July 2015. In his current role, he has responsability for leading the scientific and strategic direction of EPDS, a multi-disciplined approach to drug development designed to enhance coordination from Late Lead Optimization through proof of concept, therevy reducing the time and cost of molecule development. Dr Sausen joined Covance in 2005 as Executive Director in the Program Management Group. During his tenure with Covance, he has served in multiple Executive Management positions in Program Management Integrated Drug Development, Nonclinical Safety Assessment, Safety Assessment and Global Safety Assessment. Dr Sausen is diplomat of the American Board of Toxicology, a member of the Society of Toxicology, Phi Beta Kappa and Beta Beta Beta (National Biology Honor Society). He has authored/co-auhored more than a dozen publications and has presented at more than a dozen conferences. Dr Sausen has a bachelor degree in Biology and Chemistry from Ripon College in Wisconsin and earned his PhD in Toxicology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Oern R. Stuge is director of Impulse Dynamics NV. He was first Vice President, a member of the operating committee member and president for Europe, Canada, Latin America and emerging markets at Medtronic Inc. His numerous life sciences projects in areas such as Rx, Dx, nutrition and medical devices have given significant experience and a reputation as a leading force in this domain. Oern was a member of Medtronic’s management team for 12 years, serving as president for cardiac surgery and president for Europe and Central Asia, where he was responsible for transforming the cardiac surgery business and accelerating the growth of Medtronic companies in Europe with cardiovascular, neurological and spinal franchises. Before joining Medtronic, Oern served first as CEO of Medinor A/S, a Norwegian medical technology company, and then for Abbott Laboratories, where he was regional director and managing director for the Netherlands and the Nordic countries. He is a principal adviser to HealthCap, a life sciences investment fund with $1.5 billion under management; a member of the supervisory board of Mediq BV, an international medicines and pharmaceuticals distributor; and a director of Nobel Biocare AG, a world leader in dental implants. Dr Stuge graduated in medicine at Oslo University, and gained an MBA from the IMD business school in Lausanne

Timothy Wells is the Chief Scientific Officer for MMV, Medicines for Malaria Venture. Before joining that organisation, he was senior executive Vice President of research for Serono, conducting clinical trials on a number of innovative molecules. From 1997 to 2007, he worked at Glaxo’s molecular biology institute in Geneva, where he managed research into protein biochemistry and chemotactic cytokines. An enzymologist by training, his research interests included the relationships between protein structure and function, and the role of cytokines in controlling host responses. He has contributed to over 180 scientific publications and several patent registrations. He gained a doctorate in chemistry from London’s Imperial College for his research into protein engineering under the supervision of Sir Alan Fersht, and then obtained an ScD from Cambridge University for his work on the cytokine biology. He is a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry.