Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Versatile biotech R&D professional specializing in business development, commercial strategy and long-term collaborations with external biotech and pharma clients. Strong background in biochemistry, immunology, and T cell biology to drive innovative solutions in drug discovery and translational research. Passionate about next-generation gene editing technologies to advance cellular medicines and keen to leverage alliance management skills to support research partnerships in therapeutic areas such as immunology and inflammation (I&I), autoimmune disease and oncology. In my current role as VP, Commercial - Europe & APAC at Myllia Biotechnology I am leading the business development, commercial and external partnership activities with biotech and pharmaceutical companies. At Myllia, we utilize advanced single-cell CRISPR screening workflows in primary human cells to enable unbiased drug target discovery and scalable, AI-ready perturbation data generation for foundation models of human disease biology.
Myllia Biotechnology is redefining functional genomics by uniting CRISPR-based perturbations, single-cell resolution, and advanced computational modeling. Our platform integrates high-content CRISPR screens with single-cell RNA sequencing in primary human cells to deliver deeply physiologic, mechanistic insights. By generating large-scale, custom perturbation datasets, we enable AI-driven foundation models of virtual cells that infer causal relationships, reveal mechanisms of action, and accelerate unbiased target discovery. This end-to-end approach produces genetically validated, high-value targets for early-stage drug development and generates AI-ready data at a scale and fidelity previously impossible.
- Business development and strategic support for CRISPR screening projects - Partnering and alliance management with global biotech/pharma companies engaging with new leads for R&D relationships (expanded the industry lead list by several-fold over two years) - Managing the active business pipeline for Europe, Japan and the US globally from initial customer engagement to the final contract signatures with C-suite executives - Driving revenue growth with multiple deals closed per year (significant revenue contributions) - Developed agreements (incl. CDA/NDA, MSA) and contracts (incl. SoW, Work Order, Proposal) with external innovation leads that are reviewed with stakeholders from R&D and commercial leadership teams - Contract negotiation and deal structuring, including bespoke R&D strategy consulting - Reviewed due diligence project proposals as part of biotech/pharma negotiations - Working directly with VPs and C-suite members to evaluate project opportunities via go/no-go discussions and identifying the company's value proposition in the biotech and AI drug discovery market
- Contributed to business growth and market dynamics analyses - Implemented new website designs and marketing campaigns with external agencies - Identified prospects and initiated deal negotiations to onboard new customers - Built a platform for customer relationship management (CRM)
PhD thesis (Dr. rer. nat.): "Investigating T cell receptor-dependent post-transcriptional gene regulation by Roquin to characterize lymphocyte fate decisions" - Molecular immune regulation of T cell differentiation, mechanisms of autoimmunity and inflammation - Molecular biology, primary T cells and engineering by viral transduction - Multi-color flow cytometry (FACS) - Gene editing and CRISPR/Cas9 knock-in applications in primary T cells - Pre-clinical transgenic models, monoclonal antibody development, screening and validation - Pharmacological inhibiton assays - Cancer immunology and in vitro as well as in vivo studies
Master thesis: "Biochemical and Cellular Characterization of the Human C-type Lectin Receptor Langerin" - Chemical and cell biology, innate immunity, pattern recognition receptors - Targeted delivery systems, flow cytometry - Plate-based assay design and optimization as well as ELISA - Cell culture, receptor dynamics and recycling, antigen/carbohydrate recognition - Molecular cloning, protein expression and purification - Data analysis and interpretation
Research internship: Cell biology and nanotechnology, nanoparticle and cargo uptake by eukaryotic cells, assay development with small molecule inhibitors of Clathrin-mediated endocytosis, WST-1 cell proliferation assays, SOP and QM regulations
Research internship: Glycan array design and workflow optimization, turn-around-time optimization, HIT-related antibody analysis, assay development with human samples, microarray technology for colorimetric and fluorescent detection systems, data analysis and management (Prism, SPSS, FileMaker)