Events

Frank HEEMSKERK
founder and CEO of Research & Innovation Management Services bvba

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 (Tibotec-Virco), 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 for 500 M€ by Johnson & Johnson. In 2002 he started Research & Innovation Management Services (www.RIMSinternational.eu, 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 >2700 life science organizations, is active in Europe, Latin America, Africa and India and is core partner in a number of EU projects (FP7, ACP, see website).

His leadership positions in EARMA (a network of research managers in hundreds of academic and industrial European organizations) and co-founding of ProTon Europe (now the largest European association of University Technology Transfer offices of universities) are valuable to assess trends across Europe and beyond. He serves regularly as a consultant and Expert Evaluator to the European Commission, the Flemish government and European organizations (e.g. Advisory Board www.mariecurie.org, He has been involved in >38 EU projects since FP4 and serves on the Board of several start-up companies. This way he combines 15 years of academic research with >14 years in industry.

• Past-President European Association of Research Managers & Administrators
• Member Sounding Board for small actors on FP7 Simplification measures (DG RTD, European Commission) (2006-2008)
• Advisory Board member of Celtic Catalysts Ltd (Ireland), Eyytoo Bioscience SL (Spain) and formerly in Pharmaneuroboost NV (Belgium) and Beocare Ltd (Ireland)
• Supervisory Board member of UniCRIS GmbH (Switzerland).