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The BaseLaunch team works for Basel Area Business & Innovation.
Virginia Ballotta
Before joining Basel Area Business & Innovation Virginia Ballotta was the Country Manager Switzerland for Catalyze, where she helped biotech entrepreneurs and researchers acquire funding and shape their business strategy. She holds a Master`s degree in Bioengineering from Politecnico di Milano (Italy) and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Eindhoven University of Technology (the Netherlands), where her main research interests were tissue engineering and immunology.
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Virginia Ballotta
Manager New Ventures
Carla Benichou
In her role as Manager Program and Innovation at BaseLaunch Carla is supporting its activities in therapeutic innovation for the start-ups portfolio and new applications process. Carla holds a Bachelor’s from ESADE Business School in Business, Finance (Barcelona) and is currently enrolled in an MSc in Applied Neuroscience from King’s College London.
Carla has previous international experience in Start-up fundraising, project management, and start-up strategy consulting within Life Science and Technology sectors, from Gartner and Cukierman Investment House.
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Carla Benichou
Manager Program and Innovation
Stephan Emmerth, PhD
Stephan is Director of Business Development & Operations and also heads Therapeutics Innovation at Basel Area Business and Innovation. He has been deeply involved in establishing and building out BaseLaunch, and was involved in the sourcing, launch, growth, and successful financing of numerous biotech ventures. Stephan joined the organization from brief stints in medical affairs at Lipomed and research at Roche. He gained his Ph.D. in RNAi and epigenetics from Novartis`s Friedrich Miescher Institute, which also affiliated with the University of Basel. Stephan holds a Master’s degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from ETH Zurich.
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Stephan Emmerth, PhD
Director Business Development & Operations
Neil Goldsmith
Neil is a serial entrepreneur with broad experience of the life science sector. He has founded, or otherwise been instrumental in the early development of multiple biotech ventures over the last 35 years, including Evolva (synthetic biology, founder & CEO, IPO Zurich), TopoTarget (oncology, founder, IPO Copenhagen), Biotage (microwave chemistry, founder, IPO Stockholm), PNAD (DNA diagnostics, CEO, trade sale), BIAcore (biosensors, VP Bus Dev, IPO NASDAQ) and Scientific Generics (head of marketing, IPO LSE).
In addition to BaseLaunch, Neil is currently a board member of Alentis Therapeutics (anti-fibrotic therapeutics), Unibio plc (protein from methane) and Sundew ApS (treating water transmitted diseases). Neil has a first-class degree in Zoology from the University of Oxford, and set-up his first venture straight out of university, benefitting from a very early venture accelerator that was run by the University of Stirling.
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Neil Goldsmith
Director Strategy
Martyna Wroblewska
Before joining Basel Area Business & Innovation Martyna worked as a Project Leader at Redbiotec AG (pre-clinical stage biotech), where she was responsible for the design, development, and management of projects focused mainly on oncology and vaccine development.
Martyna holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Nicolaus Copernicus (Microbiology) in Poland and a Master’s degree in Biology from the University of Zürich (Evolutionary Biology).
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Martyna Wroblewska
Manager Innovation & Sourcing
Partners representatives on the selection board
The selection board decides which companies BaseLaunch funds
Luis Correia, PhD
Director Business Development, Roche Pharma Partnering
Carsten Kroll, PhD
Senior Scientist, SMR External Innovation & Medicinal Chemistry, pRED Roche Innovation Center Basel
Alex Stankovic
Director of Global Licensing, CSL Behring
Samantha Brandler, PhD
Head of Research Innovation, Europe at CSL Behring
Christian Mauriand
Managing Director and Head Roivant Sciences GmbH
Eric Valeur
VP Research and Head of Drug Discovery, Roivant Sciences
James Jungkue Lee
Founder & CEO, Bridge Biotherapeutics
B. Chris Kim, PhD
Board Member, Bridge Biotherapeutics
Klaus Breiner, PhD
Managing Partner, Pureos Bioventures
Ximing Ding, PhD
Associate, Pureos Bioventures
Michael R. Huebner, PhD
New Venture Lead, Johnson & Johnson Innovation
Dr. Huaizheng Peng
General Manager, CMS
James Stearns
Managing Director Transactions, CMS
Expertise from our domain specific partners
Our domain specific partners belong to the premier organizations in their fields and we provide direct access for the ventures we work with.
Philipp Marchand, PhD
Partner, Patent Attorney, Vossius & Partner
Martin Rohrbach
Partner, Head of Life Sciences, KPMG Switzerland
Heather Schwoebel
Senior Vice President of BD, Head of Platform Licensing, Alloy Therapeutics, Inc.
Thomas Fessard, PhD
Co-Founder and CEO, SpiroChem
Alexander Gutmans
Partner, Walder Wyss Ltd.
Individual advisors and consultants
Whether we or our ventures need expertise, advice and consultants of any kind in preclinical and clinical drug development, commercial and BD&L, legal and IP, we can draw from the tremendous pool of expertise available in the Basel Area but also globally. The people we work with have decades of experience in biopharma form organizations such as Astra Zeneca, Biogen, Novartis, Roche/Genentech, Shire, Idorsia, Baxter, Bayer, Amgen, Micromet, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson and others.
