CASE BioMed Advisory Board

Dr. Heidrun Flaadt studied Biology at the University of Constance where she also completed her PhD. After her postdoctoral studies (supported by a Marie Curie Fellowship) 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 Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) at the University of Basel. In 2005 she started to build up a new OTT at EMPA in Duebendorf which 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 field of Bio- and MedTech Entrepreneurship. Among others, she developed and implemented the BioBusiness, MedTech Business and eHealth Business program. Heidrun Flaadt is now the director of CASE BioMed, Center of Advanced Studies on Entrepreneurship in Biomedicine at USI.

Dr. Heidrun Flaadt Cervini is also one of 16 Women in Healthcare Innovation 2021. The award was presented to her by the Innovation Office of the University of Basel (in collaboration with Impact Hub Basel, Healthcare Businesswomen Association, WomenMatters and WEHub) for her work as director of the Center of Advanced Studies on Entrepreneurship in BioMedicine (CASE BioMed) at the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences, Università della Svizzera italiana and her significant contribution to innovation.

Since 2023, she has been a member of the Advisory Board of Swiss Healthcare Startups.

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. 

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.

Roman Fleck, PhD, MBA, is a seasoned biotechnology executive with over two decades of experience in pharmaceutical research, venture investment, and company/board leadership.
Roman  currently serves as board member or Chairman on multiple boards including Iktos, a company specializing in generative AI for drug discovery, HDAX Therapeutics, which focuses on neurological and cardiac diseases, and Adularia which discovers macrophage modulators in immunooncology. And until recently, he served as the Chairman of Omniose, a bacterial vaccine discovery company,
Previously, Dr. Fleck was a Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Janpix (aquired by Centessa Pharmaceuticals), an oncology-focused biotech company. He has also held roles as a Venture Advisor / Partner at Medicxi Ventures, where he invested in and represented companies on the boards of GlycoVaxyn (acquired by GSK), Versartis (NASDQ: VSAS), and Novocure (NASDQ: NVCR). He was also involved in Funxional Therapeutics (acquired by Boehringer Ingelheim) and Micromet (acquired by Amgen).
Earlier in his career, Dr. Fleck led drug development projects in oncology, inflammation, and cardiovascular disease at Boehringer Ingelheim, advancing several compounds from pre-clinical to clinical stages.
He earned his PhD in Organic Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and an MBA from New York University's Stern School of Business.

Melanie Wiesel currently serves as the Director of Admin Operations at the Botnar Institute of Immune Engineering since March 2025 and as an Advisory Board Member at the Center of Advanced Studies on Entrepreneurship in BioMedicine (CASE BioMed) at USI Università della Svizzera italiana since May 2024. Prior experience includes roles such as Coordinator at the Wyss Zurich Foundation from October 2021 to March 2025, Head of Operations and Project Portfolio Manager at Wyss Zurich from July 2015 to January 2025, and Technology and Licensing Manager at ETH Zürich from November 2014 to June 2015. Melanie's expertise in human immunology and drug discovery was honed during a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research from August 2011 to October 2014 and a previous postdoctoral position at ETH Zurich focused on mouse immunology. Educational qualifications include a PhD in Infection Immunology from ETH Zürich and various certificates in Nonprofit and Public Management from the University of Basel.