Board of Directors
Prof. Godfrey Grech – Director, Research & Innovation
Prof. Grech is an Associate Professor at the University of Malta and Director of Biotech Innovations Ltd, a spin-out company. The main research topic aims to identify biomarkers to classify breast cancer patients into a specific therapeutic group that shall benefit from activation of phosphatases as a main therapeutic option. Godfrey Grech published more than 25 peer-reviewed publications, presented more than 50 conference papers and published 5 book chapters including chapters in the co-edited book entitled “Preventive and Predictive Genetics: Towards Personalised Medicine” released by Springer. Professor Grech is a member of the Molecular Pathology working group of the European Society of Pathology, an active member of the European Association of Preventive, Predictive and Personalised medicine, a board member of GS1 Malta, and member of the Global Genomic Medicine Collaborative (G2MC).
Ms Martina Pace – Director, Business Development
Ms Pace is a business consultant focusing on intellectual property and commercialisation of technology, with a passion for building a commercial case around early stage technologies in various areas, from Biotech to Avionics. She has spent the last 5 years preparing academic projects for commercialisation by creating and managing strong intellectual property plan and accessing finance. Ms Pace brings in considerable knowledge and experience in technology transfer and research commercialisation. She is an expert on intellectual property, particularly on issues relating to IP strategy, patentability, patent and design registration, and drafting of licensing agreements. In addition, her strong expertise in business planning, technology commercialisation and market analysis brings together the management of IP and commercialisation.
While her career started in engineering project management with Procter & Gamble EMEA, she moved into a research management role where she gained experience in managing and developing government grant funding with the Malta Council for Science and Technology. Following this, Martina became manager at the University of Malta’s knowledge transfer office and gained over five years of experience in handling intellectual property and commercialisation of early stage technologies.
Martina completed a four-year Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Leeds, followed by a Master’s in Knowledge-Based Entrepreneurship at the University of Malta.
Mr Khaled Yassine
Mr Yassine graduated in 1996 at the University of Malta specialising in Medical Laboratory Science. His work experience as a Medical scientific officer in the quality control department, and as a marketing manager provided the knowledge to set up a trading and servicing company in the field of medical laboratory devices. In 2008, Mr Yassine registered Applied Biotech Ltd and as a manufacturer supplied all reagents for the national screening of H1N1 in Tripoli. This included training and service implementation on site. Mr Yassine also was the pioneer to introduce Luminex platform in Tripoli after years of experience in HLA typing. His experience in molecular typing, real time PCR and Luminex platforms brought together the opportunity to set up a license agreement with Luminex Corporation to develop and commercialise the HER2 test. Mr Yassine has a lot of experience in marketing and sales of molecular devices, with an excellent network of partners in Europe, African and Middle East countries. This network is instrumental in setting up a sales network.
Dr Ing Anton Bartolo
Advisors
Certification Advisor: Ing. Joseph Caruana
Joseph Caruana is a graduate in Mechanical Engineering and holds a Masters in Business Administration. He has thirty five years’ work experience in industry, ranging from highly technical positions, and a strong exposure in the manufacturing field, to top management positions covering all aspects of business operations, including the service and the medical industry. He also has experience in several start-ups, small scale situations.
He started his career with the national airline – Air Malta, as a development Engineer on aircraft engines. In 1989, he proceeded to Toly Products where he set up a state-of-the-art lacquering and metallising division which propelled Toly into becoming one of the undisputed leaders in packaging finishes in the cosmetics industry worldwide. He then moved on within the company becoming the deputy CEO for the Malta plant.
In August 1996, he was appointed General Manager at MGC Electronics Limited where he set up a new factory in Malta, producing wound components for the electronics industry. He was responsible for all aspects of the operation being answerable to the Board of Directors in the UK. In July1998 he joined the FXB group of companies, leading furniture makers in Malta, as General Manager Manufacturing responsible for 5 factories, two in Gozo and three in Malta.
In 2001, he set up Tuning Fork Limited where he is the Managing Director today. Tuning Fork provides full business re-engineering and management services, specialising in turning around ailing businesses or providing business optimisation services to companies seeking measurable improvement in their business. This includes facilitation for the installation of management and regulatory systems such as ISO9001, ISO17025, ISO14001; ISO/TS16949 and ISO17020, ISO13485, GMPs and CE Marking for medical devices.
Joseph Caruana is also a certified 3rd party auditor for ISO9001, ISO14001 and ISO50001 and an accredited trainer for Lead Assessors and an accredited Risk Assessor.
In 2005, together with another engineer, he masterminded the set up of an innovative manner of doing business through an inspection company, Inspectra Limited, servicing business to business requirements of third party visual inspection and small scale pharmaceutical production. The factory now employs over 200 employees.
In his last major assignment, Ing. Caruana was the CEO of the only state acute general hospital in Malta, Mater Dei hospital, with 900 beds for just under four years in the period between 2011 and 2014
Ing. Caruana has moved progressively from purely technical positions to senior management positions where leadership coupled with objective oriented management style provided the key to success in the roles that he has held.
IVD Advisor: Dr Kurt Krapfenbauer
Following his Science degree at the University of Vienna, Dr Kurt Krapfenbauer pursued his studies at a Masters level in the Faculty of Chemistry specializing in Bioanalytical Chemistry. In 1995, he started his doctorate studies at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Radiation Chemistry and Radiation Biology as well as at the same time as a research assistant at the General Hospital in Vienna for 4 years. His work on the identification of different neuronal associated biomarkers by different proteome techniques was published in high impact journals and presented in International conferences such as at the International Society of Amino Acid Research.
Currently, Dr. Kurt Krapfenbauer is Qualified Person (QP) of Omega Pharma since 2015, formerly lab head of the process science department of Boehringer-Ingelheim in Vienna and lab head of Hoffmann LaRoche AG and Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel. He is a QP via permanent provision with detailed working knowledge of European and FDA regulatory requirements with over 15 years of experience in the development and validation of new and innovative bio-analytical methods. He is also vice president of the European Association for Predictive, Preventive & Personalised medicine (EPMA) since 2009 with the aim of identification and validation of predictive biomarkers. In an effort to translate his scientific findings into the clinic, he developed and coordinates the development of new and innovative assays, to support the Molecular Diagnostics arm of General Hospital in Vienna.