Who We Are

Emmanuelle Benzimra

General Delegate

Emmanuelle Benzimra was appointed General Delegate of EPEMED Luxembourg asbl end of April 2012.

Emmanuelle is based in Luxembourg and has a 14 year experience in the finance and investment banking industry. As part of the senior account and product management positions held at Citi, she managed business relationships of a portfolio of European and US top tier revenue clients, overseeing profitability and delivery of fund services by client segment, retaining and expanding revenues. Emmanuelle is now leveraging her expertise and skills to work with non-profits start-ups, supporting them from creation, to business development and general management.

Currently involved in various non-profits, she is co-founding Bench2Cures, a biomedical research foundation in the making to fund & accelerate the journey from laboratories to cures, diagnostics and preventive medicine. She is also a member of the board of ATD Fourth World and introduced social projects in corporate settings.
Emmanuelle holds a Bachelor of Science and Administration in Finance from Old Dominion University, Virginia, USA.

BOARD MEMBERS

Alain Huriez

Chairman & founder

Alain Huriez MD, is the Chairman and founder of EPEMED.

Alain is Venture Partner at Advent Life Sciences in London.
Alain was previously Chief Executive Officer of TcLand Expression, a molecular diagnostic company dedicated to personalised medicine diagnostics in Immunology he co-founded in 2002, and located in Nantes France.

Alain is an industry veteran bringing 20 years experience of general management, drug development and financing in the biotechnology sector in various executive positions in Neovacs, Truffle Capital, Quintiles, GSK.

Alain is Medical Doctor, holds an MBA, a Statistics degree from the University of Paris VII, and a Masters of Pharmaco-Economics from the University of Paris I Sorbonne.

Prior to joining the Industry, he was head of an emergency room in a large teaching hospital and practiced 2 years as General Practitioner.

Alain supports and triggers several initiatives in France and in Europe regarding personalised medicine, biomarkers and high value diagnostics.

Mara G. Aspinall

Board Member

Mara Aspinall is President and Chief Executive Officer of Ventana.
Previously, Mara was Chief Executive Officer of On-Q-ity and president of Genzyme Genetics, a leading provider of testing in the oncology and reproductive markets.
Mara is a Board Member of Blue Cross Blue Shield Massachusetts. An active participant in the healthcare policy community, Mara is also a Director of the Personalized Medicine Coalition (PMC) and a founding Director of the European Personalized Medicine organization (EPEMED). She served for four years as an active member of the Federal Secretary of Health and Human Services’ Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health and Society until the Committee was closed. Mara currently holds an appointment as lecturer in health care policy at Harvard Medical School. Mara co-authored, “Realizing the Promise of Personalized Medicine” in the Harvard Business Review and was named one of the 2010 “100 Most Inspiring People in Life Sciences” by PharmaVOICE.
Mara started her business career at Bain & Company, an international strategic consulting firm. She earned her MBA from Harvard Business School and her Bachelors in International Relations from Tufts University.

Werner Kroll

Board Member

Since beginning of 2009 Dr. Kroll is Global Head Diagnostics Research and Innovation of Novartis’ newly founded business unit Molecular Diagnostics. The unit is charged to develop outcome driven innovative diagnostics that will improve the selectivity and reliability of medical care and ultimately transforming the way medicine is practiced. From 2007 to 2009 he headed up the Molecular Diagnostics and Theranostics Program at Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics and established pilot programs to access micro-RNA and methylation analysis technologies for diagnostic use in Novartis Diagnostics.

Dr. Kroll joined Novartis Pharmaceuticals in 2005 as VP and Global Head Biomarker Development in Cambridge, MA leading the early biomarker discovery activities across all pharmaceutical development programs.

Before joining Novartis, Dr. Kroll was the Global Head of Molecular Research at Bayer Diagnostics. During his 17 years at Bayer, he worked in several positions with increasing responsibilities in line functions in Research, Development and Pilot Production at both Bayer Pharma and Bayer Diagnostics. During that time he directed Bayer’s worldwide Pharmacogenomics and Toxicogenomics activities at CuraGen, a biopharmaceutical company. He enjoyed the entrepreneurial environment and interaction between a large pharmaceutical company and a developing small company.

Dr. Kroll obtained a PhD in Chemistry with a specialty in Physiological Chemistry from the Philipps University, Marburg, Germany.

Iain D. Miller

Board Member & Secretary

Iain Miller is Founder of Healthcare Strategies Group, which he set up in March, 2013. This London-based group focuses on providing strategic advisory services for the diagnostic, device, genomics, and life science tools sectors. In this capacity, he is an active contributor to several international policy initiatives, including The European PErsonalised MEDicine association (EPEMED), where he has served as a board member since its inception in 2009. He currently co-chairs the organization’s Regulatory Committee, and led in 2011 the writing of a white paper addressing the market access challenges in the EU for high medical value diagnostic tests. He is also on the Steering Committee of the Epemed / Charite Berlin European market access study, due for publication in 2013. He also served on the Steering Committee of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences Stratified Medicine market access report, due for publication in May, 2013.

He is a healthcare strategy and commercial development executive with over 20 years of diverse healthcare technology experience gained in a variety of settings and geographies. Prior to Healthcare Strategies Group, he was with GE Healthcare, where he served as Global Head, Personalized Healthcare Strategy & Partnerships. Previously, at bioMerieux, Iain was responsible for oncology strategy and also led strategy and business development for the Personalized Medicine Business Unit.

His experience base also includes founding of two medical technology startups, leadership roles in two venture-backed genomics companies, and a technology transfer executive role at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Iain holds a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Strathclyde, an MBA from Edinburgh Business School and a bachelors degree in Physics from the University of Glasgow

Pablo Jordan

Board member

Pablo Jordan joined bioMérieux in 2012 as Vice President Companion Diagnostics leading the Company efforts in molecular biology of developing partnerships with Pharma to bring innovative Companion Diagnostics solutions to market.
Pablo has proudly brought to market the first Companion Diagnostics test for bioMérieux, a great Company achievement in an effort to bring together Pharma and Diagnostics development and regulatory timelines to deliver a new standard of care for patients in the field of melanoma.
He is as well responsible to bring to new markets some of the solutions of bioTheranostics in metastatic cancer and cancer of unknown origin, a major and still unresolved health issue today.
With over 15 years of experience in Diagnostics and Personalized Medicine, Pablo has a passion for delivering enhanced diagnostics solutions for patients and that will bring value and modernize healthcare systems.
Prior to bioMérieux Pablo had different international senior roles. With Roche he was in charge of Alliance Management with Pharma Companies such as Sanofi and Genzime within a very rich portfolio including Drug Discovery and Development.
Pablo had various international marketing roles at Ventana with major product launches as well as several business roles in Millipore and Equifax.
He holds a Master’s degree in Economy from Université Paris II Assas and Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and enrolled London Business School as part of a Company executive management program.
Pablo currently lives between France and UK and has two children.

Werner Verbiest

Board Member

Werner Verbiest joined Johnson & Johnson in 1991 as an employee of the International Clinical R&D group of the Janssen Research Foundation. In this role, he was active in HIV drug development and Hepatitis B therapeutic vaccine development. In 1998, Werner joined Virco as Project Director, Business Development. Virco’s primary focus was laboratory testing for viral resistance to HIV drugs used to treat patients with HIV/AIDS.  As one of the first employees at Virco, Werner has been involved in the growth and development of the company since its inception. He has been active in all phases of HIV clinical trial implementation and resistance-test development, and has contributed to numerous papers and presentations on antiretroviral resistance.
Werner was promoted to Managing Director, Virco Ireland Ltd. in 2002 and was given the additional responsibilities of Vice President, New Products Marketing and Pharma Business in the same year.
Next to leading Virco, Werner became Global Head of the Companion Diagnostics Center of Excellence and Veridex. Veridex is a Johnson and Johnson/Janssen company dedicated to providing physicians with high-value in vitro diagnostic oncology products through earlier disease detection and personalized diagnostic tools to improve patient management and outcomes.  All three groups—Virco, Veridex, and the Companion Diagnostics Center of Excellence—were united under one umbrella in October 2011 as Janssen Diagnostics, of which Werner is the Global Head.  In this capacity, Werner plays a leading role in advocating for and actualizing a personalized medicine approach within Johnson & Johnson/Janssen. 
Werner earned a combined Masters in Biology and Biotechnology from the University of Antwerp (Belgium, EU) and a post-graduate degree in Business Management / MBA from the University of Utrecht (The Netherlands, EU).

Peter Collins

Board member

Peter has been Vice President, Head of Diagnostics at GSK since Nov 2010. Peter leads GSK’s Diagnostic Nucleus focussed on supporting the diagnostic needs of GSK’s Clinical Development Programs across all business units. Peter has over 30 years experience in the Diagnostics industry, specialising in Companion Diagnostics and Personalised Medicine, an area for which he has a real passion and commitment to see delivered.

Peter was formerly VP Pharma Business Development for Qiagen driving the uptake of personalized healthcare solutions in multiple partnerships across the pharma industry. Before this he was VP Business Development at DxS prior to its acquisition by QIAGEN in September 2009, , playing a pivotal role in securing a number of the company’s companion diagnostic agreements for KRAS and EGFR with key pharma clients. Peter was also VP of Marketing and Sales for Vysis Europe (now Abbott Molecular Diagnostics), where he lead the introduction PathVysion Her2 for selection of patients eligible for Herceptin in the EU.

Peter has an entrepreneurial background and held senior executive roles, including CEO, at a number of early stage diagnostics and life sciences companies including Quantase (Biorad), Gentronix, Biogenex and Pronostics. He began his commercial diagnostic career with Syva( Dade Behring/Bayer/Siemens) and BD’s Immunocytometry division. Peter started his career as a bench scientist in the NHS.

Patrizia Luchetta

Board Member & Treasurer

Patrizia Luchetta is Director of New Technologies at Ministry of the Economy and of Foreign Trade, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

Patrizia has been with the Ministry of Economy since September 2006. Patrizia began her career in the industrial and financial sectors, primarily in the fields of marketing and public relations.

She joined the Luxembourg social-democratic group as a parliamentary attaché, helping to formulate budgetary, economic and environmental policy. In this function she defended the group’s views in task forces at the European Union level, including fiscal policy and banking legislation

Her experience also includes working with PAM, a California based public affairs group specializing in environmental concerns.

Within the Ministry of the Economy she has been the lead agent in developing the Health Sciences and Technologies Hub, to bring expanded research, business and job opportunities to the Luxembourg economy. Her expertise over a wide range of disciplines has been instrumental in the success of this program. She’s recently been given the responsibility of refining the Ministry’s strategic orientation with regard to clean / green technologies.

Patrizia sits on the Board of the Integrated Biobank of Luxembourg (IBBL) as deputy chairman, and on the Board of Integrated Diagnostics, a Seattle-based start-up.

Patrizia received both her Bachelor of Science degree in Social Science and Masters of Arts degree in Social Science. She is member of the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), Lausanne. Patrizia is currently enrolled in a specialized Biotech Management Programme at IE Business School (Madrid).

Jami Taylor

J&J Designate for Board Member

Jami Taylor is Global Policy Leader for the Janssen Diagnostics organization within Johnson & Johnson (J&J). Situated within J&J’s pharmaceutical sector, Janssen Diagnostics is the focal point for the fulfillment of J&J’s vision for personalized medicine—a vision that extends across a broad range of therapeutic areas and pipeline products. In her current role, Jami serves as the key two-way linkage between Janssen Diagnostics and J&J Government Affairs & Policy, supporting an enterprise-wide, global effort to help shape the future of personalized medicine policy for the benefit of patients.

As part of this global effort, Jami leads J&J’s outreach to external stakeholders in personalized medicine policy. She is currently co-chair of the Personalized Medicine Diagnostics Working Group at the Biotechnology Industry Organization, vice-chair of the Education Committee of the European Personalised Medicine Association (EPEMED), and the J&J designate to the EPEMED Board of Directors. Jami is also an active member of the Personalized Medicine Coalition’s Public Policy Committee and of the European Biopharmaceutical Enterprises’ Personalised Medicine Task Force.

Jami joined J&J in January 2011 after more than 10 years in public affairs consulting, where she specialized in alliance development, policy communications, and issue-campaign design and execution. Her experience includes work with the White House Office of Public Liaison, members of Congress, and the Departments of Treasury, Commerce, and Health & Human Services to advance legislative priorities on a nationwide scale.

Jami is a contributing editor of Global Pharmacovigilance Laws & Regulations: The Essential Reference, a book published by the Food & Drug Law Institute (FDLI) in Spring 2009. She also served as a vice-chair of FDLI’s inaugural conference on U.S.-China Food and Drug Law, held in Beijing in June 2011.

Jami currently resides in Washington, DC with her husband and three children.