Contact us
RI coordination units looking for the Innovation Office’s support, or willing to share their best practices, please send us an email to:
innovation [at] corbel-project.eu
If you are working for a research institute, which is part of a RI, please get in touch with your RI coordination unit first (click here for contact data). RIs coordination units are responsible for centralising their institutes’ requests for support.
CORBEL Innovation Office Helpdesk - Expert Profiles
Learn more about the experts available at the CORBEL Innovation Office Helpdesk:
Kees de Ruig, Partnering Support
Kees de Ruig has an educational background in Medicinal Chemistry. After obtaining his Master’s at the Free University in Amsterdam, Kees got involved in clinical research. He has worked as a Project Manager at the phase 1 unit Pharma BioResearch (currently part of PRA) and then at the imaging corelab BioClinica. At BioClinica, Kees moved into a managerial role as the Manager of the Project Management Team. In 2014, Kees obtained his MBA with a thesis on 'Open Innovation in the Life Sciences'.
Kees joined EATRIS in 2015 as Business Development Manager. In this role, he is responsible for the development of partnerships between industry and academia. He interacts directly with industry but also with science parks, branch-organizations and investors. He strongly believes that innovation requires collaboration, and collaboration requires respect for the motivational drivers of the partners. A clear understanding of these drivers is the basis of the win-win solutions he fosters.
Tim Moser, Partnering Support
Tim Moser is EATRIS industry partnering specialist. He was educated in biology, and later obtained an MBA in Supply Chain Management. His work experience includes basic scientific research in bacteriology and immunology, evolving into operations and site management in life sciences companies. Since 2010 he works in technology transfer and specializes in industry partnering in life sciences, pharma, and biotech.
As Director of Business Development for Industry Alliance Office of Amsterdam Neuroscience, Tim developed and negotiated collaboration agreements with companies including Avid, Biogen, Boehringer Ingelheim, EIP Pharma, GSK, IBL/Tecan, Janssen/J&J, Lysosomal Therapeutics, Medavante, Merck, Novartis, Ono, Probiodrug, Roche, Somalogic, and UCB. He specializes in identifying the frontier areas in academic translational medicine that spark intense interest for industry, and pursuing mutually beneficial routes toward partnership.
Anton Ussi, Partnering Support
Anton Ussi is Operations & Finance Director for EATRIS C&S. Anton has a background in engineering and SME administration. He is a specialist in the establishment and execution of strategic public-private and public-public collaborations based on the deployment of high value translational research infrastructure for medicine.
Anton has been co-responsible for the development of several ongoing public private partnerships and spin-out companies, among which the €130 million VU University Medical Imaging Center Amsterdam, and the Dutch Imaging Hub, a public-private translational initiative with Roche-Genentech and three Dutch university medical centres.
Tamara Carapina, Legal Support
Tamara Carapina is an experienced legal counsel with a demonstrated history of working in public and corporate sector. She has a solid legal background in European Union law, Intellectual Property Law, Corporate Law and Pharmaceutical law and additionally skilled in negotiations, legal writing and diplomacy.
After obtaining her LL.M. in International and European law in 2004 from Utrecht University, The Netherlands, Tamara joined Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integrations and worked on harmonization of national legislation with the EU legislation. She was actively participating in the Croatian negotiation process and negotiating team for accession to the EU, with special contributions and support on the chapters of Intellectual Property, Public Procurement and Free Movement of Goods- pharmaceuticals and medical devices.
Before joining EATRIS, Tamara was working in a fast expanding pharmaceutical company as a Head of Legal and IP Department, responsible for protecting company’s IP and contracting with worldwide partners. This included various types of agreements such as license agreements, co-development agreements, technology transfer agreements, supply agreements, manufacturing agreements, distribution agreements etc.
Nigel Wagstaff, IP and Licensing Support
Nigel Wagstaff studied chemistry and worked for over 30 years for Shell in research, technology licensing and intellectual asset management. His research activities included work on refinery conversion processes, membrane separation, analytical chemistry and catalyst manufacture. In 1980 he transferred from the Amsterdam laboratory to the Shell central office in The Hague where he was involved in research planning and budgeting before moving to a marketing role in the licensing of Shell’s refining technology processes. The interest in licensing and intellectual property stayed with him throughout the rest of his career, with a final assignment as global Intellectual Asset Manager for Shell International Chemicals.
After retiring from Shell in 2015 Nigel joined the technology transfer office (now IXA) of the Amsterdam VU University and Medical Center, working as business development manager on licensing and spin-off ventures, mainly in physics, chemistry and life sciences. He was responsible for a number of licensing deals with industry parties and was involved in setting up several high-tech start-ups emerging from academic research and often assisted by entrepreneurs from outside academia.
Since 2015 he has been working as innovation advisor to EATRIS in Amsterdam, with special emphasis on the CORBEL innovation work package. In addition he does freelance work for other clients in innovation, technology transfer and marketing skills for scientists. Nigel has been a member of the Licensing Executives Society Benelux since 1991 and served between 1997 and 2006 on its board including spells as secretary and president. He is a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK).
Giovanni Migliaccio, Regulatory support
Giovanni Migliaccio has been EATRIS Scientific Director since 2011. He obtained a PhD in Biological science in 1977 at the University of Naples (Italy). His area of scientific expertise is in experimental haematology and stem cell proliferation and differentiation mechanisms. He spent two years as Post Doc at the University of Washington (Seattle, WA) and 5 years as Associate Scientist at the New York Blood Center (New York, NY). He continued his studies at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) in Rome resulting in more over 190 scientific publications over the years.
He is currently the sitting member for Advanced Therapies Medicinal Products in the committees delegated to the authorisation of clinical trials in Italy. As such he was proposed to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) as an expert and participated in the drafting of guidelines for the Cell Therapy working group from 1997 to 2011. He was the Italian National Delegate to the Committee for Advanced Therapies at EMA from 2009 to 2011.