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Frank HEEMSKERK
CEO, Research & Innovation Management Services

After an academic background of 15 years in neurochemistry and pharmacology in the Netherlands (U Utrecht), USA (National Institutes of Health) and France (U Pasteur), Dr Frank Heemskerk joined a small Bio-pharmaceutical company in Belgium, 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 over 4 years, through a merger, multiple private placements and finally an acquisition by Johnson & Johnson. In 2002 he started Research & Innovation Management Services (RIMS, Belgium) as an independent service provider focused on building Open Innovation networks to bring Knowledge from Academia to the Market. The company has now access to a global network of 2500 organizations.

His leadership positions as President of the European Association of Research Managers & Administrators (EARMA, a network of research managers in hundreds of academic and industrial European organizations) and co-founder of ProTon Europe (now the largest association of University Technology Transfer offices of over 500 universities across Europe) help to get a view on what's happening across Europe and beyond. Dr Heemskerk has served many times as external expert and as Evaluator for various services of the European Commission. He has been involved in >38 EU projects since FP4 and serves on the Board of several start-up companies (e.g. Celtic Catalysts Ltd (Ireland), Eyytoo Bioscience SL (Spain) and UniCRIS GmbH (Switzerland)).