Dr. Jesus del Valle, Head of Bayer Grants4Apps Digital Health Accelerator - Dr Jesus de Valleis the main driver behind Bayer’s Digital Health Accelerator, which is opening it’s fifth round this year, offering one of the highest grants (50K) to Startups compared to other Incubators and Accelerators. Mr. del Valle isa Physicist who obtained his PhD in Biology and has worked for more than 20 years in Life Sciences. He has been working in IT Management at Bayer for 7 years. He is interested inin networking with startups, mentors, stakeholders and investors in digital health, healthcare, medtech, biotech, life sciences, agtech, or animal health companies or organizations.

Stanislav Sirakov, Partner at LAUNCHub - Mr. Stanislav Sirakov is a Partner at LAUNCHubSeed stage Venture Capital firm based in Sofia investing in early stage startups in Bulgaria and the wider Southeastern Europe region. In 2008 he left from Allianz, raised an angel round to build his own startup market place for small business lending. Mr. Sirakov has more than 10 years financial industry experience managing project and building new businesses inside the corporate world with executive roles in business development, risk and operational management. He is a financial executive turned entrepreneur, turned venture capitalist. The second 18M EUR LAUNCHub Ventures fund, announced in December 2016 expands into the seed space with investments in the range of 300K to 700K EUR, expandable up to 2M EUR per company.

Dorjan Marušič, Practicing Cardiologist, Former Member of the Expert Panel at European Commission DG for Health and Consumers (DG Sanco) - Dorjan Marušič is a mathematician and a Specialist in Internal medicine. He served as Minister for Health of Slovenia between 2010 and 2012. Between 2013 and 2016 he was a member of the Expert Panel on Effective Ways of Investing in Health at the European Commission DG for Health and Consumers (DG Sanco). The composition of the Expert Panel reflects the need for a highly reputable advisory group with balanced expertise in the various domains of health to address the diversity of scientific and practical problems and approaches in the Union health care sector. He currently works as a practicing cardiologist and focuses on Health Technology Assesment in his research.

Dr. Klaus Stöckemann, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Peppermint VenturePartners - after obtaining his PhD in biology and pharmacology, he had held several leading positions in research and development and business development with companies like Schering AG and ASTA Medica. He later became a partner in a leading international investment firm 3i and in 2009 he co-founded Peppermint Venture Partners, which specializes in investments in Digital Health and Medical Devices. He is the Chairman of the board of several young companies such as Caterna Vision GmbH, which develops digital therapies for treating eye disorders and Emperra GmbH, which has developed the ESYSTA® System - the first GSM and Bluetooth enabled smart insulin pen connected to a web based portal, enabling web-based telemedical closed-loop management system for patients with insulin dependent diabetes mellitus type 1 and 2 and Vice-Chairman of Implandata a company having developed the first wireless sensor for measuring intraocular eye pressure in Glaucoma patients.

PVP is currently launching its second fund (PVP II) with a focus on investments in innovative solutions alongside the individual health journey at the crossroads of medical devices and digital health. PVP II aims to start investing from 2018 on.

Klaus is also a mentor of several digital health accelerators such as Startupbootcamp as well as Member of the board of the German Association of Venture Capital since 2015.

Dr. Axel Polack is a General Partner at the Joint Polish Investment Fund. Before JPIF Dr. Polack was from 2000 to 2014 a key member of the Life Science team at TVM Capital, which raised more than 680m€ in venture capital and accomplished 67 investments, 18 IPOs (“initial public offerings”) and 15 trade sales. 
In 1995, Dr. Polack was appointed as an Assistant Professor/Private Lecturer (“PD”) by the Ludwig-Maximilian-University. He holds a Doctorate, summa cum laude in Medicine from the University of Freiburg and a second thesis (postdoctoral lecture qualification “Habilitation”) in the field of Virology.

He serves as a Director of the German Vaccine Research Foundation. Dr. Polack’s doctoral thesis was honored with the Goedecke Research prize for outstanding fundamental research in medicine. He was the Deputy Head at the GSF Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology for eight years. 

Additionally to his entrepreneurial capacity within the portfolio and company management he is focusing on sourcing and assessment of new investment opportunities, while also providing support to existing portfolio companies. Dr. Polack’s expertise is based upon scientific training in various disciplines, broad understanding of the drug development process (molecular and translational medicine) as well as commercial experience resulting from his strategic and operational responsibilities as a board member as well as a member of management in various startup companies.
 

Alex Farcet is a Co-Founder and Director of Startupbootcamp Holding Ltd - a global network of industry-focused startup accelerators. Before becoming a serial entrepreneur, he worked for DHL for 13 years in different positions, which have him a broad understanding of the corporate world from various perspectives. 

He currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of Startupbootcamp Digital Health Berlin and is focused on the global expansion of Startupbootcamp and working on new programs in the US and Latin America. He is also a Partner of VentureScout and the owner at Rainmaking ApS.

There are 19 industry-focused programs across the world under Startupbootcamp, which support startups with direct access to an international network of the most relevant mentors, partners, and investors to help them scale.