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Bi/ond was founded to empower biological innovations through the use of engineered microchips. Our intimate working relationship with biologists helped realize the supportive role engineering can play in generating reproducible and accurate biological models.

This is how we built a bridge between biology and engineering - through the combination of our in-depth knowledge of microelectronics and experience with biological solutions

We provide tools to some of the top European hospitals and collaborate with a myriad of technical institutes and research centers.

Every person is unique, and our medicines should reflect that as well. The Bi/ond team aims to make this reality possible by developing a lab technology for more accurate drug testing and simulations of any tissue type.

Cinzia Silvestri, CEO and founder Bi/ond

dr. Cinzia Silvestri

CEO and co-founder

“Progress is more than just innovation”

Cinzia has a doctorate in microelectronics and an entrepreneurial mindset.

She has over six years of experience in research focused on nanomaterials, silicon microfabrication and applications in biotechnology. 

During her experience in academia, she realized that her mission is to shorten the distance between academics and industry.

Cinzia strongly believes that a new set of role models in science are needed, this is why she built up a diverse and multidisciplinary team to address the big challenges in the Organ-on-Chip field.

Her interest in making an impact led her to walk on a few stages, especially to show the importance of gender balance in STEM.

This approach brought her to be nominated as Inspiring 50 Italy for 2019.

Thanks to her vision, BI/OND has been included in the Fund Right Initiative both as women-lead company as well as diversity in the team.

Nikolas Gaio, CTO and Founder Bi/ond

dr. Nikolas Gaio

CTO and co-founder

“Pragmatically and realistically, a future without animal testing is possible”

Nikolas has a PhD in Microelectronics and a MSc in biomedical engineering. Together with the Bi/ond team, he is working to bridge the gap between microelectronics and biology.

He aims at demolishing the communication barriers between researchers in these two fields, by supporting their research, not only with lab tools, but also with experienced advice.

Nikolas is currently in charge of several pilot projects and is providing each group with tailored services to unlock the potential of their research.

Thanks to his passion to reduce and replace animals in drug testing, Bi/ond is included in the Animal-Free Innovations list 2019, an initiative defined by the Dutch TPI Initiative (Transition Program for Innovation without the use of animals).

Ewoud Ouwerkerk, Advisor

Ewoud ouwerkerk

Advisor of the Board

As Bi/ond is growing rapidly, we are happy to be partnering with Ewoud Ouwerkerk, Commercial Director of Twist Bioscience. The potential of our technology meets the successful experience of Ewoud in supporting innovative biotech companies. He will work closely with the leadership and sales team as Bi/ond continues to expand its business throughout Europe.  

 

“Ewoud is an unique leader who has a track record of exceptional commercial strategy and execution”, says Cinzia Silvestri, co-founder and CEO of Bi/ond. “His phenomenal success at Twist Bioscience illustrates his ability to support the building of an organization. We look forward to Ewouds’ guidance as we advance with bringing our products to the market in support of our mission to develop inclusive and precise cures for all by engineering microchips that mimic organs in a human body. This collaboration with Ewoud will boost the adoption of microphysiological system solutions and unlock the full potential of Bi/ond on the market.” 

 

Ewoud Ouwerkerk is currently the general manager EMEA at Element Biosciences, a multi-disciplinary startup focused on innovating genetic analysis tools for the research and diagnostic markets. He will help them to initially establish a footprint in the US while Element explores expansion into Europe. He also has served as Twist Bioscience’s Commercial Director EMEA, a leading synthetic biology and genomics company. He joined Twist just prior to the launch of its synbio product line and subsequently supported the introduction of the next-generation sequencing (NGS) portfolio. Before joining Twist Bioscience, during the past 20 years, he held positions of increasing commercial focus. Ewoud holds a degree in biochemistry and one in business administration.

Mitchell Han, Senior Scientist at Bi/ond

Mitchell Han

Senior Scientist

“Only together we can tackle the biggest challenges in bringing scientific progress to society”

Mitchell has a PhD in Cell Biology and has more than 4 years of Postdoctoral research experience in cell-biomaterials interactions. He is motivated to making complex physiologically relevant cell models more accessible with the Bi/ond team.

With his expertise in cellular characterization, he aims to further develop complex cell models that better mimic tissues of the human body, which will reduce the need for animal testing and paves the way for personalized medicine.
Mitchell strongly believes that a multidisciplinary approach is needed to take the Organ-On-Chip platform to the next level.

His experience working at the interface of biology with material science, engineering, and biophysics, certainly make him a perfect fit to contribute to this goal.

Marieke Aarts, principal Scientist at Bi/ond

Marieke Aarts

iig Senior Scientist

Marieke has always been fascinated by the enormous potential of stem cells, particularly how they can be manipulated to turn into the many different cell types that make up the human body. 

She has a PhD in Molecular Biology, during which she worked on a method to change the genetic code of embryonic stem cells. Her interest in stem cells was further carried over to her postdoctoral research in London, where she gained more experience in high-throughput screening to identify new cancer therapies and improve stem cell reprogramming. These skills she later used in industry, setting up cell-based assays for target discovery and implementing new technologies to innovate research pipelines. 

She joined Bi/ond because she believes organ-on-chips have the potential to better mimic human disease and can make a difference in bringing new therapies to patients. 

 

“The Bi/ond team brings together experts from different fields making it an exciting and fun place to work. Together we can build better models for human disease and help bring new cures to patients.” 

 

Curtis Nicholson, Sales lead Europe at Bi/ond

Curtis Nicholson

Sales Lead - Europe

Curtis has an MSc in Immunology gathering solid work experience with various advanced platforms for multiplex biomarker analysis, analyzing protein interactions, and, cellular characterization. He has been working in sales for the past nineteen years, focusing his last years in the field of functional proteomics. He is ready to bring his knowledge and broad skillset to Bi/ond, introducing our disruptive technology to the market, strengthening our network, and establishing long-standing partnerships.  
 
The opportunity to work at Bi/ond gives him the chance to evaluate the existing market to assess areas for improvement and the current areas in which the application of OOC technology remains unexplored. Moreover, he will guide the sales and marketing team to spotlight and bring awareness to the real advantages Bi/ond’s technology offers over conventional techniques and the competitive landscape, developing a platform that enables a true representation of systemic biology that can be used for effective disease modeling and drug development programs and ultimately establishing Bi/ond as the preferred platform recognized by regulatory agencies for OOC application in drug development. 

Zuriñe Garcia, Marketing lead at Bi/ond

Zuriñe Garcia Martin

Marketing Lead

“Working for Bi/ond is an opportunity to dwell into a very interesting field, with real impact into our society. I am happy to be part of the team helping develop personalized medicines for individualized needs, with important objectives in mind such as health care improvement and reduction of testing on animals”

Zuriñe is Spanish, but has lived and worked in the Netherlands for the last nearly 20 years. Here is where she obtained her MBA, which she holds next to a bachelor in Advertising and PR. Zuriñe has worked both in Spain and in the Netherlands in advertising agencies, consultancy companies, and B2B organizations of different industries and sizes. She is a very versatile person, passionate about supporting sales growth, spreading the word about company offerings, and helping them professionalize. 

Zuriñe brings to Bi/ond a mix of Marketing and Communications skills and B2B expertise from both large international companies, and smaller scale start/scale ups, with insights into the pharmaceutical industry. She is very eager to dive into the field of Organ-on-Chips which we are excited about!

 

Lucas Dal Ponte Feliciano, Electronic Systems Engineer at Bi/ond

Lucas Dal Ponte Feliciano

Electronics System Engineer

Lucas has an MSc in mechatronics, working with the development of innovative products for the past 6 years. Only in the last year, he has worked on developing implantable sensors and never looked back!

The opportunity to work at Bi/ond gives him the chance to develop the best electronics data acquisition and control systems for stimulating and monitoring cells for our product ecosystem. With his personal experience with the developments of data acquisition systems and a methodology that integrates the progress of electro-medical devices, his mission is to improve our time to market while providing high-quality products to our end users.

Tawab Karim, Junior Process Engineer

Tawab Karim

Junior Process Engineer

“Science is the tool for modern day evolution of mankind”

Tawab is a recent graduate, but with his expertise in microfabrication and biology, he aims to further develop the Bi/ond organ-on-chip platform.

He kicked off his career as a Junior Mechanical Engineer focusing his efforts and tasks on the healthcare environment, a field dear to him and where he could see solid growth. He began to work on super-resolution microscopes which enabled the use of light microscopy down to single nanometers.

From the academic and research world, Tawab decided to shift towards the industry field working along with ambitious startups with a revolutionary mission. After a short experience as Algorithm Engineer, he focused his professional ambitions on a field he was actively studying and he could put his acquired skills into practice: microelectronics.

Working at Bi/ond represents for him a unique opportunity to combine healthcare and micro-fabrication, working within a young and ambitious research team supported by a great commercial drive. His ambition is to help establish the technology of Bi/ond products and bring the power of our micro engineered devices at the services of R&D pharma and strike a difference in modern medicines.


Liesbeth Gebuijs

Inside Sales Engineer

Liesbeth’s interests have always been in the field of life sciences. That started with physiotherapy, but after mainly treating disease symptoms, she was keen to pursue the research side of diseases. She gained a bachelor’s in higher laboratory education, followed by a master’s degree in biomolecular sciences and one in oncology. She continued her research education with a Ph.D. project and worked as a researcher in Sweden.

After enriching experiences in the lab, she felt motivated to join a commercial company to put all into practice. After a year as an inside sales engineer working for pharmaceutical companies, Bi/ond offered her the opportunity to set up the inside sales strategy and she didn’t miss the opportunity. Liesbeth truly believes in our potential and considers our OoC platform a more suitable and representable option to pave the way toward personalized medicine by using the patient’s own material for testing drugs and other dedicated therapies. 

Linda Groenendijk Junior research technician at Bi/ond

Linda Groenendijk

Junior Research Technician

“Great ideas set the bar and a great team pushes it beyond” 

Linda’s interest in science was cultivated from a young age through reading biology books and taking apart small electronics. Her interest in vitro models for drug screening and personalized medicine was piqued during her bachelor’s. Since then, she has worked on various different projects throughout her studies employing a variety of techniques such as bioprinting, stem cell differentiation, and disease modeling using organ-on-a-chip devices.
With all that experience under her belt, Linda is excited to bring her combined knowledge in material science and cell biology to the Bi/ond team.  

Linda has a Master’s degree in biomedical sciences and a background in cell biology and biofabrication. She aims at pushing the limits of in vitro modeling and is determined to produce more relevant systems to improve disease modeling to provide more effective pharmaceutical treatments. With her background in material science and biology, she is adamant about bringing the field of organ-on-chip to the forefront of research.  

At Bi/ond, she is delighted to be working with a multidisciplinary team and to collaborate with experts in various fields. With curiosity driving her passions, she enjoys sharing her knowledge in biology while learning more about microfabrication and mechanical engineering.  

Anish Ballal, Mechanical Engineer at Bi/ond

Anish Ballal

Mechanical Engineer

“Innovation is my passion and engineering is my profession”

Anish Ballal holds a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from University of Twente, Enschede. He is passionate about designing innovative and feasible solutions and validating them to meet the customer based requirements. 

He brings in 2 years of experience and expertise with mechanical design and testing for high tech consumer and biomedical based solutions.

Anish believes in cultivating relationships with stakeholders and motivating colleagues to implement complex solutions. 

Following his motivation in working towards bridging down research and science based ideas into engineering solutions, Anish joined BI/OND in 2020 to support the development of a platform for accurate and effective drug based testing solution for patients.

Lonnekke

Lonneke Walraven-Odijk

Financial Controller

“BI/OND aims to do good for mankind and has a product with a lot of potential to have a great societal value and impact. That’s where I feel at home”

Lonneke takes care of setting up the administration and make reports available in a way everyone can easily understand them, and make sure that all information get updated with just one click.

She will be implementing internal processes as lean as possible to make sure there are no unnecessary steps.

Lonneke has been working within the field of project administration in research-oriented companies for 12 years.

She gained lots of experience with implementing, testing and adjusting administration software which also met the reporting requirements for the European and regionally funded projects. She also built management-requested reports from scratch.

Lonneke joined BI/OND because she is really more of a science-girl, indeed she feels at home there where’s research being done and the aim is to improve the world for the better.

William F S Solano, co-Founder

dr. William F. G. Solano

Co-founder

“Science is the most powerful tool to overcome our customers’ challenges”

William is one of the founders and inventor of Bi/ond. He also holds a position as Adjunct Professor at Costa Rica University; he supports universities and research centers gathering data while publishing results obtained with the Bi/ond device. 

With seven years of experience in micro-fabrication and microfluidics, William is in charge of working with customers to find optimal parameters to obtain the best physiologically relevant environment for their cells.

His passion for data and science makes him the right person to supervise the characterization and testing of devices, and he will do everything to deliver a reliable product.

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