Thierry Damerval

French National Research Agency (ANR), France

Thierry Damerval was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of the French National Research Agency (ANR) by Decree of the President of the French Republic dated 8 December 2017. Thierry Damerval has been Inserm's Vice-CEO since 2011 after holding the position of Deputy Director-General for Strategy from 2007 to 2011. PhD in microbiology from the University Paris Diderot, he began his career at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and joined the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) in 1993 where he held several leading positions including that of manager of biology research programmes, director of strategy and evaluation and director of a CEA biomedical research centre. He also has been adviser on biological and medical research to the French Minister in charge of Research (1996-1997), adviser on research and innovation to the Prime Minister (2005-2006) and Director of the Office of the Minister for Higher Education and Research (2006-2007).

Irene Norstedt

Director responsible for the People Directorate within the DG for Research and Innovation

Irene Norstedt works at the European Commission where she is the Director responsible for the People Directorate within the DG for Research and Innovation.  Irene has been at the European Commission since 1996, and was instrumental in the creation of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) in 2008. From 16 December 2014 to 15 September 2015, Irene served as Acting Executive Director of the Innovative Medicines Initiative. Prior to joining the European Commission, she worked for the Swedish life science company Biacore AB and at the Swedish embassy in London. Irene studied biotechnology and polymer science, and holds a Master of Science (MsC) in Chemical Engineering.

Ejner Moltzen

Innovation Fund Denmark

Ejner Moltzen is a medicinal chemist by training and has for over almost 30 years been working within R&D at H. Lundbeck A/S in different managerial as well as strategic positions. He has been heavily involved with running efficient drug discovery projects, both in terms of delivering candidates for clinical trials and in terms of optimizing the related processes. He was part of Lundbeck’s global research management and thereby involved with setting the company’s research strategies and activities. He was also responsible for alliance management within R&D and was involved with both company collaborations as well as public-private partnerships, where he represented Lundbeck in EFPIA/IMI context. In 2016 he became independent and founded Somami Consulting ApS, which is a consulting company focusing on providing support within R&D projects, operations, alliance management, strategy and policy initiatives, collaboration contracts and project evaluations. He is supporting public agencies as well as private enterprises, nationally as well as internationally. He is in particular involved with Innovation Fund Denmark where he is this agency’s lead representative within international activities relating to personalized medicine. He is currently elected as Chair of ICPermed which is an EC funded European initiative to promote implementation of personalized medicine.

Eduardo Cazap

Latin American & Caribbean Society of Medical Oncology SLACOM, Scientific Committee

Eduardo Cazap is an Argentinean medical oncologist, founder and first President of the Latin American & Caribbean Society of Medical Oncology (SLACOM), past-President of the International Union against Cancer (UICC) and member of the Executive Committee of the National Cancer Institute of Argentina. He published over 190 papers, and was president of the UICC World Cancer Congress in 2012. He received in 2013 the distinguished achievement award of the Conquer Cancer Foundation (USA) and bestowed as fellow of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (FASCO). In 2018, he received the Harvard Distinguished Leader Award from the Harvard Medical School. He is Co-chairman of the Global Policy Committee (ESMO), Editor-in-Chief of Ecancer (Bristol, UK), co-editor of the Global Health section of The Oncologist (USA) and emeritus Professor of the Latin-American School of Oncology (ELO).