Dr Frank Heemskerk, founder & CEO
After an academic background of 15 years in medicine and biology (neurochemistry and pharmacology) in the Netherlands (U Utrecht), USA (National Institutes of Health) and France (U Pasteur), he joined at the end of ‘90s a small Bio-pharmaceutical company in Belgium (Tibotec-Virco), world leader in R&D for HIV drug discovery, development and diagnostics. As Director Research Coordination & Funding he was responsible for the Co-ordination, Management and Administration of all publicly funded Research projects in the company and the Business Development aspects of the external Research collaborations. In this position he supported the growth of the company from 28 to more than 250 employees, through a merger, multiple private placements and finally an acquisition by Johnson & Johnson.
In 2002 he started Research & Innovation Management Services (Belgium) as an independent service provider focused on building Open Innovation networks to bring Knowledge from Academia to the Market.
His leadership positions as President of EARMA (a network of research managers in hundreds of academic and industrial European organizations) and co-founder of ProTon Europe, now the largest European association of University Technology Transfer offices of universities) are valuable to assess trends across Europe and beyond. He serves regularly as a consultant and Expert Evaluator to the European Commission, the Flemish government and European organizations (e.g. Advisory Board Marie Curie Fellows Organisation. He has been involved in >42 EU projects since FP4, serves on the Board of several start-up companies and is a well recognized Trainer on EU funding, business development and knowledge transfer across Europe, Latin-America and sub-Saharan Africa.
- Past-President European Association of Research Managers & Administrators (EARMA)
- >18 years expert evaluator for European Commission
- Editorial Board member of European Association for Predictive, Preventive and Personalized Medicine (EPMA) and of Research Global (international Management journal of the Association of Commonwealth Universities)
- Board member and/or investor in several start-up companies in Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Ireland, UK and India.