Dr. Martin Welschof is currently the CEO for BioInvent, Sweden. Martin brings significant senior executive experience in the biotech sector having launched and built successful businesses focused on drug development and drug discovery platforms. Before joining BioInvent, Dr. Welschof was CEO of Opsona Therapeutics, Managing Director and co-founder of Affitech A/S in Oslo/Norway and Copenhagen/Denmark. Prior to joining Affitech A/S, Dr. Welschof was the Director of Technology at Axaron Bioscience AG, Heidelberg, Germany. During his period at Axaron he worked also in the parent company of Axaron Bioscience, LYNX Therapeutics Inc. in Hayward California. Martin holds a PhD in the field of recombinant antibody technology from the University of Bielefeld, Germany. Martin Welschof also serves at the board of UTR AS, Nextera AS and APIM Therapeutics.
Dr. Tom Burt joined Sofinnova in June 2017 and brings experience of life science investment banking and late-stage public/private investing. Tom joined from Peel Hunt, a London-based growth investment bank, where he was Senior Healthcare research analyst. Prior to this he was an Investment Director with Ares Life Sciences, a late-stage healthcare fund with c.€2bn AuM and backed by the Bertarelli (Serono) Family. Before this he was based at Novo Growth Equity, an investment division of Novo Holdings, responsible for investing US$200m per year in late-stage public/private life science companies in US & Europe. Tom began his finance career in 2006 as member of Piper Sandler’s European Healthcare Investment Banking team working on financings and M&A for late-stage European life science companies. Previously, Tom worked at GSK in large-scale vaccine manufacture and holds an Engineering Doctorate and Master’s degree in Biochemical Engineering.
Dr. Christine Power graduated from the University of Leeds, UK, with a BSc. Honours degree in Biochemistry, followed by a Ph.D. from the University of Surrey, UK. She has worked in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries in various roles of increasing responsibility in R&D for over 25 years starting at Ciba-Geigy (now Novartis in Switzerland), British Biotechnology Ltd, UK; Glaxo Institute for Molecular Biology (Geneva, Switzerland), Serono and later Merck Serono (part Merck KGaA), Arsanis Biosciences (Vienna, Austria) and most recently for GSK (Stevenage, UK). She has experience working in a variety of therapeutic areas including allergy and asthma, cardiovascular, autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, cancer and infectious diseases. She has broad expertise in the discovery and pre-clinical development of therapeutic proteins and monoclonal antibodies. Whilst working at Serono, Merck Serono and GSK she successfully managed a number of scientific collaborations and funded research projects with pharmaceutical and biotech companies (including start-ups) and academia, and worked with their respective business development units performing due diligence and evaluation of in-licensing opportunities for therapeutic proteins and antibodies as well as for new technologies. Dr. Power has an excellent track record of innovation and productivity in research witnessed by inventorship on over 40 patent applications, and is author of over 80 scientific papers. With this expert background, in 2020, Dr. Power created her own company, Christine Power Consulting based in France, to provide strategic advice and scientific opinion to biotech and pharmaceutical companies, start-ups, and universities in the field of antibody discovery and development.
Dr. Björn Cochlovius is a Molecular Biologist and Associate Professor for Immunology at Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany.
- Dr. Cochlovius has held various leadership positions in biotech (e.g., Affitech, Oslo) and big pharma (amongst others at Roche, Basel; Abbvie, Singapore) in R&D, Business Development & Licensing and strategic positions.
- He currently holds two chairmanships (Sapreme, Netherlands, and Karolinska Development, Sweden).
