Switzerland
Dr. Rudi Pauwels is a pharmaceutical scientist with a specialty in virology, micro&nanotechnology and a serial biotech entrepreneur. During his 35-year career he aimed to push the fronteer in high precision medicine. Starting from a vision on current and future needs he combined passion, drive, talented co-workers and innovative technologies to bridge the gap between science and the pharmaceutical and diagnostic solutions that reach the market and impact patient lives around the world. He currently leads the Praesens Foundation that contributes to better epidemic preparedness, early warning and rapid response for existing and emerging infectious diseases. He is board member of world leading nano-electronics center imec (Belgium) and A*STAR (Singapore). He is chairman of miDiagnostics and Investment Committee member of Smile Invest, a 350 million euro growth equity fund for innovative companies. During his Ph.D. studies he described the first anti-HIV activity of the phosphonate RT inhibitors from which Tenofovir (Gilead Sciences) is derived. In 1990 he and his colleagues described the first HIV NNRTI. He (co)-founded several successful biotech companies including Tibotec, Virco, Galapagos Genomics and Biocartis. The Tibotec/Johnson & Johnson anti-HIV drugs Prezista™, Intelence™ and Edurant™ play a key role in current AIDS treatments. In 2007 he created Biocartis that developed and commercialises a series of tests on the Idylla™ system, a fully integrated and automated, sample-to-result molecular diagnostic solution. He is (co-)author of more than 150 papers and is the recipient of several awards for his scientific and entrepreneurial accomplishments, including the Global Technology Pioneer award from the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2012.