Board of Directors

Board of Directors

Dr. Werner Cautreels was until his retirement in December 2018 President and CEO of Selecta Biosciences (Boston and Moscow). Previously, he was global head of R&D of Solvay Pharmaceuticals (Weesp, The Netherlands) and became in 2005 CEO of Solvay Pharmaceuticals (Brussels, Belgium) until it was acquired by Abbott Laboratories in 2010. Prior to joining Solvay he was employed by Sanofi, Sterling Winthrop and Nycomed-Amersham in a variety of R&D senior management positions in Europe and in the United States. Dr. Cautreels has acted as Director in various companies, among which Galapagos, Seres and Innogenetics. He is currently Chairman of Cristal Therapeutics (Maastricht, The Netherlands). He was the President of the Belgian Chamber of Commerce for Russia. He was born in Antwerp, Belgium, and received a PhD in chemistry from the University of Antwerp. He received his management and financial education from the Harvard Business School.

Dr Possemiers is a founder and CEO of MRM Health and has over 15 years’ expertise in gut microbiology, host-microbiome interactions and immunity at both academic and industrial level. He is an experienced entrepreneur with an extensive commercial network and previously co-founded ProDigest, which he built and led as CEO for 12 years. He also co-founded MRM Technologies, a center of expertise for microbiome R&D, and previously acted as R&D Director of BioActor, a Netherlands-based health ingredient company. He holds a PhD in intestinal microbial ecology from Ghent University, Belgium, which was performed in partnership with the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) in Paris, France.

Mr Van Nieuwenborgh is investment manager at Ackermans & van Haaren since September 2014. He obtained a Masters in Civil Engineering from the University of Ghent (2005) and an MBA from Harvard Business School (2009). Jens previously worked at McKinsey & Company where he was promoted to associate partner before joining Ackermans & van Haaren.

Dr Hasselwander is an IFF Technical Fellow and part of IFF’s Health R&D Leadership Team. He has more than 20 years of experience in R&D, innovation, technology scouting, business development and project management in the health ingredient industry both at IFF (Danisco, DuPont) and BASF. Oliver has a Diplom in Nutritional Science from the University of Stuttgart-Hohenheim, Germany and a PhD in Clinical Biochemistry from The Queen’s University of Belfast, Northern Ireland.

David joined Korys in November 2021, focusing on venture capital investments in the life science sector. He started his career as at PMV in the fund of fund business unit before joining the life sciences direct investments unit as a senior investment manager. At UCB he was the Head of the Immunology R&D Insights to Impact team and acted as an independent scientific, strategic, and financial sparring partner providing insights and transversal resource reallocation challenge for the early and late-stage immunology missions. David holds a Master in Pharmaceutical Sciences and a Master in Economics and Business Administration from the Ghent University as well as a Ph.D. in Entrepreneurial Finance from Vlerick Business School..