Speaker Bios

Dr. Yuval Binur »
Mikael Brönnegård »
Cynthia Ekberg Tsai »
Peter Ehrenheim »
Dr. Michael Fonstein »
William J. Gedale »
Udayan Gupta »
Dr. Bo Jesper Hansen »
Dr. William A. Haseltine »
Dr. Laurent Leksell »
J. Jay Lobell »
Benjamin Nordin »
Niklas Prager »
U. S. Senator Larry L. Pressler »
Professor Vicki Sara »
Dr. Robin L. Smith »
Tony Svensson »
Professor Mathias Uhlén »
Peter Utterström »
Professor Harriet Wallberg-Henriksson »


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Dr. Yuval Binur

Dr. Binur has over 23 years of venture capital experience in the US, Europe and in Israel. In addition to co-founding ATI together with Martin B. Leon, MD and Rick Geoffrion, Dr. Binur has been a founding partner of Medica Venture Partners, a global health care and life sciences venture capital fund operating from Israel. For 9 years prior to co-founding Medica, Dr Binur was a member of Adler & Co., a major U.S. venture capital firm based in New York. He has been a board member of over 30 venture-backed companies in the areas of pharmaceuticals, medical devices, software and electronics among other boards. Dr. Binur was a director of Percutaneous Valve Technologies, Inc. (PVT), a company that has revolutionized the replacement of heart valves and was sold during 2004 to Edwards Lifesciences, Inc. Dr. Binur holds a B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering and Ph. D. degree in physics.


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Mikael Brönnegård

Director Business Development Healthcare. Mr. Brönnegård joined InnovationsKapital in January 2001 from Pharmacia Corporation, where he held a position as Vice President of Global Medical & Scientific Affairs. He has several years of pharmaceutical industry experience at both local market company and corporate levels. He is a specialist in Paediatrics and has extensive experiences in clinical research and in basic science/research including molecular biology, protein biochemistry and immunology. He has an M.D., Ph.D. degree from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, where he also holds a position as Associate Professor.


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Cynthia Ekberg Tsai

Cynthia Ekberg Tsai is Founder and CEO of HealthExpo®, the largest consumer healthcare event in the U.S. In just four years she has grown the enterprise from concept to execution, attracting more than 10 million consumers to HealthExpo®.

In 1999 Ms. Tsai was honored by the Harvard Business School Alumni Chapter in New York with an Early Stage Honor Roll Award for Entrepreneurship. Ms. Tsai is a General Partner in MassTech Ventures, a multi-million dollar equity fund focusing on technology development at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She has achieved international recognition for her specialization in private equity financing and development of high-growth companies via private capitalization by high-net-worth investors. Ms. Tsai is Advisor to the Chairman of Maxim Pharmaceuticals, a public company working in cancer therapy.

Her leadership in healthcare includes membership on the Advisory Committee of the National Institute of Health, the Board of Directors of the American Association for World Health (the American segment of the World Health Organization), and the New York Board of Directors for the Weizmann Institute of Science. Ms. Tsai is a Fellow of the Foreign Policy Association, a member of the Economic Club of New York, and was Founder & Chairman of the Patron's Board of the American London Symphony Orchestra Foundation. In 2001, Cynthia joined the Board of The White House Project. Ms. Tsai earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Missouri and sits on the Board of the Institute for Global Finance at Pace University.


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Peter Ehrenheim

Mr. Peter Ehrenheim started his career in what is now GE Healthcare in 1983. He has held positions in R&D, Marketing, Manufacturing and Business Development, including a 3 year assignment as head of the PL Biochemicals site in Milwaukee. Since 1999 he's Head of Protein Separations and in 2004 he was also promoted to Vice President of GE Healthcare.


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Dr. Michael Fonstein

Dr. Fonstein has served as Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer and President of Cleveland Biolabs since their inception in June 2003. He served as Director of the DNA Sequencing Center at the University of Chicago from its creation in 1994 to 1998, when he left to found Integrated Genomics, Inc. located in Chicago, Illinois. He served as CEO and President of Integrated Genomics from 1997 to 2003. Dr. Fonstein has won several business awards, including the Incubator of the Year Award from the Association of University Related Research Parks. He was also the winner of a coveted KPMG Illinois High Tech Award.


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William J. Gedale

William J. Gedale is a Managing General Partner of NGN Capital. He has been in the investment business since 1965. Mr. Gedale joined NGN from Mount Everest Advisors, which he founded in 1996. He has served as an investment advisor to individuals and as a full time consultant to Warburg-Pincus Capital Management, the world's largest venture capital firm, between 1999 and 2001. In this capacity, he initiated the $140 million dollar financing of ZymoGenetics. He also helped arrange the $350 million funding by Sandoz (Novartis) of the Scripps Research Institute and the $40 million funding of the Neuroscience Institute of La Jolla, California (of which he is a trustee). Before founding Mount Everest Advisors he was a Managing Director at John W. Bristol & Co. in 1995. Before this, as of 1989, Mr. Gedale was President & Chief Executive Officer of General American Investors, which he had joined in 1969. He is currently Chairman of Promosone and Vice Chairman of Enzybiotics. He has been a director of Ga mco (Gabelli Holding), General American Investors, Allied Clinical Laboratories, U.S. Home Health Care, Unilab Corporation, and BioReliance Corporation. William Gedale holds an M.B.A. from New York University, a J.D. from Fordham Law School, and an A.B. from Syracuse University.


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Udayan Gupta

UDAYAN GUPTA is one of the senior most South Asian business journalists in the United States.

He is editor of the new "Done Deals: Venture Capitalists Tell Their Stories" (Harvard Business School Press, September 2000).

Gupta is the founder of biztrail.com, a multimedia news and information publisher. A small-business development and strategy consultant and freelance business journalist, he served as a Senior Special Writer for the Wall Street Journal for over a decade. Gupta was also a Walter Bagehot Fellow in Business & Economics Journalism. Gupta graduated in Economics from Harvard University, then took up filmmaking and film criticism. He is the director of two documentary film portraits and has a Masters in Film from Boston University. Late in the 1970s, Gupta began developing an interest in the new technologies and in the entrepreneurial revolution that was taking place. He started writing for a startup magazine, Venture, and for a number of other national publications. In 1985, he joined the Wall Street Journal to cover venture capital and continued doing so until his departure in 1996. Between 1992 and 1995, The Media Guide recognized Gupta as one of the leading business writers in the U.S.

He lives in New York city, with his wife, Kathleen, and son, Arun.


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Dr. Bo Jesper Hansen

Dr. Hansen has been in SWEDISH ORPHAN INTERNATIONAL AB since 1993 having established the subsidiaries in Norway and Denmark and is also responsible for the current expansion into the big five countries in Europe. Has held several positions within the company before becoming Vice President for the mother company and later on being appointed the company CEO. During this period he has also co-founded the Shared Clinic “The Prostate Clinic” in Denmark. Dr. Hansen experience includes International Marketing and Contract negotiations, extensive knowledge within Regulatory, Pharmacovigilance, Medical Marketing and Business Development and he has close collaborations with persons involved in the Pharmaceutical Industry in general and in the Orphan Drug area in particular.

Prior to joining SWEDISH ORPHAN INTERNATIONAL AB, Mr. Hansen worked as a medical advisor for several of the biggest Pharmaceutical Companies through the privately owned and founded company Scandinavian Medical Research. Today, Dr. Hansen acts as ordinary member of the board in the SWEDISH ORPHAN INTERNATIONAL Group, VIVOLUTION A/S, and ZYMENTEC A/S.

Dr. Hansen is a Medical doctor, PhD from the University of Copenhagen having significant research experience. Dr. Hansen is the author of more than 40 publications in international peer-review scientific journals and is an experienced presenter at international scientific congresses.


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Dr. William A. Haseltine

William A. Haseltine PhD is Chairman of Haseltine Global Health, LLC, a virtual pharmaceutical company dedicated to developing new and more efficient means to develop new life saving drugs and medical devices. He is also President of the Haseltine Foundation for Medical Sciences and the Arts, a foundation that supports access to high quality health for the poor and middle class of developing countries and that also fosters a dialog between sciences and the arts. He is an Adjunct Professor at The Scripps Institute for Medical Research.

William Haseltine has an active career in both Science and Business. He was a professor at Harvard Medical School from 1976-1993 where he was the chair of two academic research departments. He is well known for his pioneering work on cancer and HIV/AIDS. He is the Founder of Human Genome Sciences, Inc and served as the Chairman and CEO of the Company until 2004.He is also the founder of seven other successful biotechnology companies. He serves as an advisor to CMEA, a venture capital company, and to several biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.

Dr. Haseltine is active in public service. He is Co-Chair of the President’s Council of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a member of the Advisory Board of the Global Coalition on HIV/AIDS, a member of the Board of One World Health, a member of the CEO Council of the New York Academy of Science, and Chair of the Berkeley Center of Synthetic Biology. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the Brookings Institution, a member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission, and a member of the Chairman’s Circle of the Asia Society.

He resides in Washington DC and New York City


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Dr. Laurent Leksell

Dr. Laurent Leksell, born in 1952, is the Founder, and former President and Chief Executive Officer of Elekta AB (publ) of which company he has been a member of the board since 1974. Elekta is a leading international medical-technology company offering advanced and innovative clinical solutions and services for precision radiation treatment of cancer and minimally invasive treatment of brain disorders. Elekta was founded in 1972 by the late Lars Leksell, professor of neurosurgery at the Karolinska Hospital. The company is listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange since 1994. With its head office located in Stockholm, Sweden, the Company has around 1,200 employees and net sales amounting to approx. 3,5 bn SEK. Dr Leksell received his MBA in 1974 and his Ph.D. degree in Business Administration in 1981. Both degrees were received from the Stockholm School of Economics where Dr Leksell also conducted research. In 1978-79 Dr Leksell was a visiting scholar at the Harvard Business School in Boston. He has been on the faculty of the Swedish Institute of Management, the Stockholm School of Economics and a visiting Professor at INSEAD, France. Before assuming his current position at Elekta AB, Dr Leksell was a partner and founder of an International Management C onsulting Firm. He also serves at the board for Karo Bio, and Ortivirus.


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J. Jay Lobell

Mr. Lobell has served as Chief Executive Officer, Secretary and a member of the Board of Directors of Paramount Acquisition Corp. since October 2005. Mr. Lobell has served as President and Chief Operating Officer of Paramount BioCapital Asset Management, Inc. and Paramount Biosciences, LLC since January 2005, and is a registered representative of Paramount BioCapital, Inc. From 1996 through December 2004, Mr. Lobell was a partner at Covington & Burling, a law firm. Mr. Lobell received his B.A. from Queens College in 1985 and his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1988.


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Benjamin Nordin

Benjamin Nordin started as a biotech analyst at Nordiska Fondkommission in 2000 and he is currently covering the sector at Kaupthing Bank. Mr. Nordin has also been working as a project manager at Center for Medical Innovation (CMI) at Karolinska Institutet (now Karolinska Institutet Strategy and Development Office, CDO). Furthermore he has experience from venture capital financing as a consultant at Science Cap as from journalism working at "Dagens Nyheter" and "Biotech Sweden". He holds a M.Sc. in molecular biology from Uppsala University and a degree from Uppsala Graduate School in Biomedical Research (UGSBR).


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Niklas Prager

Mr. Prager started his professional career in the pharmaceutical industry in the US 10 years ago. Through positions of increasing responsibility in both sales and marketing in the US and in Sweden, Mr. Prager was last year appointed Managing Director of Pfizer in Sweden after having been with the company for one year.

Mr. Prager holds a MBA degree from the Stockholm School of Economics and did parts of his MBA at the University of Michigan School of Business Administration in Ann Arbor. He currently serves on the Boards of the Swedish Pharmaceutical Industry Association, the Swedish American Chamber of Commerce and the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce.


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U.S. Senator Larry L. Pressler

PRESSLER, Larry Lee, a Representative and a Senator from South Dakota; born in Humboldt, Minnehaha County, S.Dak., March 29, 1942; graduated, University of South Dakota, Vermillion 1964; attended Oxford University, England, 1965, as a Rhodes Scholar; received a graduate degree from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard 1971; graduated, Harvard Law School 1971; admitted to District of Columbia bar in 1972 and commenced practice; served in the United States Army 1966-1968, with service in Vietnam; served in the Office of Legal Advisor to Secretary of State 1971-1974; elected as a Republican in 1974 to the Ninety-fourth Congress; reelected to the Ninety-fifth Congress and served from January 3, 1975, to January 3, 1979; was not a candidate for reelection to the House of Representatives, but was elected in 1978 to the United States Senate; reelected in 1984 and again in 1990 and served from January 3, 1979, to January 3, 1997; unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1996; chairman, Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation (One Hundred Fourth Congress); admitted to the New York bar in 1997; formed Pressler International, LLC, and serves on five corporate boards of directors; teacher and senior fellow, University of California, Los Angeles, 2001-; partner, Brock Law Firm in New York City; member, Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial Advisory Board, 2004-; appointed official observer, Ukraine national election, December 2004; is a resident of Washington, D.C.


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Professor Vicki Sara

Professor Vicki Sara is the Chair of the Australian Stem Cell Center. She is also the Chief Executive Officer of the ARC since July 2001. From September 1997 to June 2001 she was the Chair of the Council and a member of the Prime Minister’s Science Engineering and Innovation Council (PMSEIC). She is Chair of the Bureau of Meteorology Advisory Board and a member of the Cooperative Research Centres Committee, the Advisory Board of the Rio Tinto Foundation for a Sustainable Minerals Industry and the Australian Law Reform Commission Gene Patenting Advisory Committee. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. Vicki was appointed Vice-Chair of the OECD’s Global Science Forum in 1999, and a member of the Advisory Board of the APEC R&D Leaders Forum in 2002.


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Dr. Robin L. Smith

Dr. Smith who received a medical degree from Yale University in 1992 and a master's degree in business administration from the Wharton School in 1997, serves as Chairman and CEO of Phase 3 Medical / Neostem, as well as Chairman of the advisory board of China Biopharmaceuticals Holdings and the business advisory board of Enhanced Care Initiatives. During the past two years, she has acted as a senior advisor and consultant to both publicly traded and privately held companies in the healthcare and other fields where she assists in capital raising efforts, strategic development initiatives and marketing and sales. Her current activities also include evaluating companies in healthcare, media and emerging technologies on behalf of investment banking concerns and serving as acting President and CEO of Taking Care, a subsidiary of Accor Hotels, where she is building a health, wellness and beauty offering for their guests. She also sits on the Board of Directors of the New York University Hospital for Joint Disease as Chairman of Recruitment and new development and has been asked to join a think tank group for Yale University School of Medicine's Department of Neurosurgery to assist in analyzing resources and future initiatives. Dr. Smith.

Prior to these activities, Dr. Smith served as President and CEO of IP2M, selected as one of the 10 fastest growing technology companies in Houston. Previously she was Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer for HealthHelp, Inc., a National Radiology Management company that managed 14 percent of the healthcare dollars spent by large insurance companies.


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Tony Svensson

Mr. Tony Svensson is the Executive Director at ISA New York office. He has a M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, and received a MBA at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford, USA. Previously consultant working with international sales, marketing and business development for high technology companies. Mr Svensson has held positions as President and Vice President of sales and marketing at companies in the ICT sector, for example Effnet Group, which has given him a long experience in US sales and marketing management. Mr Svensson is Swedish and has been living in US since some 20 years.


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Professor Mathias Uhlén

Mathias Uhlén is Professor of Microbiology at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden. Dr. Uhlén is member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Science (IVA), the Royal Swedish Academy of Science (KVA) and the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). He is Vice-President of the European Proteomics Association (EuPA) and member of the Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) council. He was Vice-President of the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), responsible for external relations, from 1999 to 2001 and he was the chairman of the Swedish Biochemical and Molecular Biology Society (SFMB) from 1994 to 1999. Dr Uhlén has more than 280 publications in bioscience with the focus on the development and use of affinity reagents in biotechnology and biomedicine.

In the early eighties, Dr. Uhlén cloned and characterized staphylococcal protein A, which is now used extensively for purification of antibodies both in diagnostics and therapy. He also showed in 1983 that protein A could be used as an affinity tag for purification of other proteins. The use of affinity tags for purification of recombinant proteins are now widely used in bioscience. In the late eighties, Uhlén published the use of magnetic micro spheres with streptavidin for automated solid phase applications. Such laboratory systems based on streptavidin beads are at present frequently used both in research and diagnostics. In the 90:ies, his group described a new principle for affinity reagents, called Affibodies, and showed their use as research tool and recently as potential cancer therapeutics. Uhlén and colleagues also developed a new strategy for DNA analysis called Pyrosequencing, a method that has recently been further developed by a US company into a highly parallelized sequencing instrument.

Dr Uhlén is currently working on the Human Protein Resource Project (HPR), with the aim to systematically map the human proteome. In August 2005, the first version of a Human Protein Atlas was published (www.proteinatlas.org) with more than 400,000 high-resolution images representing 700 human proteins.

He has founded several companies, including Pyrosequencing AB (Biotage AB), Affibody AB, SweTreeGenomics AB, Magnetic Biosolutions AB and Creative Peptides AB. He has received numerous awards, including The Svedberg prize in 1992, the Göran Gustavsson prize in 1993, the gold medal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences in 2004, the Most Noble Order of the Seraphim - the Order of His Majesty the King in 2004, the Jerker Porath award and the Akzo Nobel Award both in 2005.


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Peter Utterström

Peter Utterström has a long experience in tax and corporate law with a focus on M&A, transactions and financial issues. He is a member of Delphi & Co's Tax Department and is also heading the Life Science group of the firm with approximately 10 lawyers. He has been partner of Delphi & Co since 1983. During 1998 and 2003 he was the Managing Partner of Delphi & Co and is currently the senior partner.

Over the past 20 years Peter Utterström has been the advisor to national and multinational enterprises in primarily the IT-, Finance- and the Life Science sector advising clients regarding corporate governance, investments and transactions.

After service at the County Administration in Gothenburg, the Local Tax Court of Gothenburg, the Administrative Court of Appeals and the National Tax Board's Private Advance Ruling Department, he joined the tax department of Arthur Andersen & Co, Stockholm, in 1978. Before joining Delphi & Co's Stockholm office he was a partner of Erik Berglunds Advokatbyrå during 1985-1990 and Advokatfirman Landahl 1991-1993.


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Professor Harriet Wallberg-Henriksson

Professor Harriet Wallberg-Henriksson has been President of Karolinska Institutet since 2004. She is a member of Karolinska Institutet´s Nobel Assembly, which selects the winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine every year.

Harriet Wallberg-Henriksson was appointed President after over 25 years at Karolinska Institutet, one of Europe´s largest medical universities and one of the highest ranking medical university in the world. She studied at Karolinska Institutet both at an undergraduate and postgraduate level, earned an MD and a PhD degree in medicine, became an associate professor and, since 1998, has held a professorship in physiology. From 1999 to 2001 she was also Dean of Research and Chairman of the Board of Research.

Harriet Wallberg-Henriksson's knowledge, interest and experience in the research policy field have been drawn from numerous appointments, particularly as the Secretary General (2001-2003) and Assistant Secretary General (1996-1998) of the Swedish Research Council's Scientific Council for Medicine. She was also a member of the Government's expert panels for the ALF negotiations at the Ministry of Education and Science and the "Profit for Hospitals" report at the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs. Since 2004, she is member of the International Science and Technology Forum (STS), Tokyo, Japan and member of the International Scientific Advisory Council to the Government, Singapore.

She has been appointed by the Government to lead Swedish delegations to the UN, and to represent Sweden on the boards of numerous bodies, including the European Science Foundation, the WHO´s Agency for Cancer Research, and the Heads of International Research Organisations (HIROs), an international group of major research financiers.

Harrier Wallberg-Henriksson began her career as a physician and a medical researcher in physiology. Her dissertation topic was glucose transport in skeletal muscle and its relationship to diabetes mellitus. She has maintained her interest in physiology through her passion for issues related to physical activity and metabolism.

Her work besides that of University President involves research into finding ways to combat diabetes, a chronic disease that is becoming increasingly endemic with the rising tide of obesity, stress and physical inactivity amongst the public. She has written or co-written some 130 scientific articles in the field of diabetes and clinical physiology, and was Vice President of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) (2002-2005).


 
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