CASE BioMed Advisory Board

Heidrun Flaadt Cervini studied Biology at the University of Constance where she also completed her PhD. After her postdoctoral studies at Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, she attended Management Education in Zurich. She then served as COO of Diagene, a spin-off company at University of Basel. During that time, the company completed the first capital round. Driven by her interest for technology transfer she took over a position at the Offi ce of Technology Transfer ( OTT) at the University of Basel. In 2005, she started to build up a new OTT at EMPA in Dübendorf that she headed until end of 2007. In 2008, she moved to Ticino to join her husband and received a mandate from the Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano to create new Executive Programs in the fi eld of bio- and medtech entrepreneurship. Among others, she developed and implemented the “BioBusiness” and “ MedTech Business” and "eHealth Business" programs. Heidrun Flaadt Cervini is the founder and director of CASE BioMed, Center of Advanced Studies on Entrepreneurship in Biomedicine at USI.

Piero Martinoli had been President of the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) from September 2006 until August 2016. In this role, he fostered initiatives to develop supercomputing and computational sciences in Ticino through the establishment of the Institute of Computational Sciences, essential to guarantee the presence of the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre in Ticino. He also managed the project that lead to the establishment of a Faculty of Biomedical Sciences at USI. Martinoli studied at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Zurich (ETH Zurich) where he earned a degree in physics and later a doctorate degree with an experimental-theoretical thesis on the proximity effect of superconductor-normal metal contacts exposed to a magnetic field. As visiting associate professor, he worked in the United States for one of the most prestigious research centres in the study of physics and matter: the Ames Laboratory of Iowa State University. Thanks to the research conducted overseas, he obtained professorship at the ETH Zurich and a chair in experimental physics at the University of Neuchâtel. In the latter, he developed an intense research programme (supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the European Union, and the European Scientific Foundation) on two-dimensional superconducting systems. The work resulted in over 120 publications in prestigious international journals. Two of Martinoli’s studies were cited in the scientific background of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics, assigned to David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz. During his two sabbaticals, Piero Martinoli was visiting scientist at the IBM Research Lab in Zurich and visiting professor at the University of Geneva. He was president of the Division II of the Swiss National Science Foundation and recently he was appointed individual member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences. 

Enrico Braglia, M.Sc (Economics), ONELIFE founder and chairman, is a serial entrepreneur with over 25 years of top management experience in the healthcare and finance industry. Enrico is involved in many professional and non-profit international organizations and serves on the board of several innovative companies.

After graduating as Master of Engineering in electronics from ETH Zurich, Jörg Dogwiler joined ABB Power Systems as a system engineer in 1994 and later became group leader in systems engineering for combined cycle power plants. In 2000, he moved to Zühlke Engineering where he was project manager responsible for the development of various industrial products, including those for medical devices. During this period, he successfully filed for several patents to protect inventions in the field of infusion pumps. In 2006, he joined confinis ag as partner, and spent 10 years playing an active role in the successful development of the medical device consultancy company. During this period, he acted as senior consultant and senior project manager on various customer projects specialized in the field of medical devices working, amongst others, on the implementation of quality management systems, global product registrations and operative quality support. Since 2016, as founder and CEO of Congenius AG, he is in charge of the consultancy company that specializes in the field of medical devices, pharmaceuticals, diagnostics and biotechnology in Switzerland and abroad. In total, Jörg combines more than 20 years of experience in development and regulatory affairs of medical devices. He has supported several start-up companies, from a regulatory point of view, that are successfully marketing their medical devices.

Ruggero G. Fariello is a Board Certified Neurologist and Neuroscientist. Ruggero obtained Specialty Certification from the American Boards of Neurology and Psychiatry (Neurology,1979) and in 1980 in Clinical Electrophysiology . In his Academic career Ruggero was tenured Professor of Neurology at the University of Wisconsin (Madison), Texas (San Antonio), Jefferson (Philadelphia, as Vice Chair of the Dept. of Neurology) prior to being appointed Professor and Chair of Neurological Sciences at Rush University in Chicago. His work was devoted to the pathophysiological mechanisms of the epilepsies and neuro disorders. At the clinical level he led International clinical trials in epilepsy and movement disorders. In 1990 Ruggero became Corporate R&D Director (from Discovery to registration) for the CNS area at Farmitalia Carlo-Erba eventually merged into Pfizer (during the last mergings he retained a Senior Consultant position, supervising the development of drugs for Parkinson Disease, Depression and Epilepsy up to their registration. In 1998 Ruggero founded Newron Pharmaceuticals SpA, bringing it to a successful IPO to the Swiss Market and remaining on the Board of Director until 2005. Then he became CSO and CMO of Brane Discovery srl contributing to its acquisition by the Swiss Biotech Neurotune AG where he has been CMO unitl 2013. Ruggero runs also BioNeuroFar a consultancy firm advising private and public organizations and Companies with biotechnological, scientific, industrial and educational needs in the area of brain science. In 2014 Ruggero was a cofounder of Pharmafox a Swiss Biotech devoted to the development of new proteins to treat neurological and muscular disorders. Ruggero acts as an advisor to VC firms, Universities, Pharma Industries and sits on the Board of Directors of Biotech companies and Foundations. Ruggero is an author of over 170 peer reviewed articles, several books on epilepsy and movement disorders and several patents.