About BII
About BII
About BII
Embracing start-ups
The BioInnovation Institute Foundation
The BioInnovation Institute Foundation (BII) is an international enterprise foundation with a non-profit objective. BII operates an incubator to accelerate world-class life science innovation.
Our vision is to support world-class life science innovation that drives development of new solutions by early life science start-ups for the benefit of people and society.
With continued positive development, The Novo Nordisk Foundation can provide up to EUR 470M (DKK 3.5B) to BII over 10 years.
Learn more about BII on our governance page.
Read more about the Novo Nordisk Foundation
Any questions? Check out our FAQ.
Our culture and values
BII Basics
BII’s entrepreneurial environment is shaped and nurtured every day by our employees, start-up teams, and everyone who joins us in bringing research to market.
We strive to work by three core values. We call them the BII Basics.
Impactful. Catalytic. Passionate.
Discover BII's Impact Report 2022
Discover BII’s Impact Report 2022 with CEO Jens Nielsen: A Comprehensive Walkthrough of our Transformative Journey
Read BII’s Impact Report 2022 here.
Meet the BII team
Collaboration is key to us, so please get in touch
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Kåre Engkilde
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Jens Nielsen
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Trine Bartholdy
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Markus J. Herrgård
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Thomas Hoffmann
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Bobby Soni
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Sofie Lorentzen
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Alma Dalsgaard
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Anders Mønsted
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Andrew Julius Bende
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AM
Anne Marie Melia
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Anne Steinø
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Antonia Zoric
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Amalie Kathrine Born Djurhuus
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Arnoud Klokke
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Benjamin Hamelmann
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Bo Heinemann
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Bo Jiang
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Boyang Ji
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Carlotta Strelow
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Caroline Lund Pedersen
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Cathrine Nygaard Christensen
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Cecilie Eist
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Christian Brix Tillegreen
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Danielle Adonis
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Emilie Josefine Lyderik
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Emilie Torstensen
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Frederik Valbjørn
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Hanna Ollinen
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Hannah Ochala
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Heike Ross
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Iben Nikolajsen
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Jakob Staun Pallesen
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Jeroen Bunck
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Joana Khorto
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Johanna Roostalu
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Jonathan Robinson
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Julie Cordes
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Kamilla Karlshøj
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Kenneth Hanson
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Laura Elisabeth Spijkers Arlgade
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Leonie Kellner
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Line V. Kristensen
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Lisa Bengtsson
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Louise Clemmensen
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Louise Faurby
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Lucas Andrew Bak
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Maria Flindt
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Maria Gøtz Konradsen
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Maria Henriques De Jesus
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Marie Vedel
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Matthias Wulf
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Nassir Ahmed
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Nina Haldipur
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Petar V. Todorov
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Peter Hauge Mikkelsen
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Pia Jelbo
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Ruth Lahoz
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Sanne Brun Jensen
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Shivani Joshi
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Sidsel Damsgaard Thomsen
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Sigrid Christine Nordtorp Hyldig
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Tabea Schröder
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Tamar Szeps-Znaider
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Taylor Cooney
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Tina Chanruk Larsen
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Tine Presterud
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Tony Cheng-fu Chang
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Umar Adegoke
Board of directors
Board of Directors
Meet the BII Board of Directors and read the interview with the idea makers behind BII.
Member of the Novo Nordisk Foundation’s Board of Directors from 2014 and Vice-Chair since 2018. Marianne Philip serves on several boards including as chair of The Committee on Foundation Governance and is among others experienced in company and foundation law, investments and corporate governance.
Chair
Robert G. Urban has over 25 years of international experience in the healthcare industry. In 2018, Robert retired from Johnson and Johnson as the Global Head of Johnson & Johnson Innovation, LLC. Prior to joining J&J, Robert was the founding Executive Director of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was previously the CEO of Acretia Inc, he has also held founding and executive positions at ZYCOS Inc and Pangaea Pharmaceuticals. Robert has served on the Board of diverse companies and not-for-profit organizations.
Vice-Chair
With + 25 years of international experience from the biotech industry, Martin Bonde has held several leadership positions as CEO for e.g. Vaccibody, Epitherapeutics, Natimmune, Combio,Torsana Biosensor, and Ostemeter Biotech.
Board member
Regina is a Managing Partner at Wellington Partners Life Sciences (WPLS) and represents the WPLS funds on the Boards of Ayoxxa, Carisma Therapeutics, Endostim, GTX Medical, SNIPR Biome, STipe Therapeutics, Themis and TRiCares. She was a founding investor in Rigontec (acquired by MSD), Sapiens (acquired by Medtronic), Middle Peak Medical (acquired by Symetis / Boston Scientific), and an external director at GlaxoSmithKline’s Respiratory TA Board. Since joining the industry in 2000, she has become an influential investor in the European VC industry, focusing on early-stage and growth deals in Life Sciences. She currently serves as the Spokesperson for the Board of the German PE and VC Association (BVK).
Before joining WPLS, Regina led the European life sciences efforts of Boston-based Atlas Venture. She was the founding investor in Bicycle Therapeutics, F-star, and Jenavalve, and served on several Boards, including U3 Pharma (acquired by Daiichi Sankyo), Nitec Pharma (now part of Horizon Pharma NASDAQ HZPN), Egalet (NASDAQ: EGLT), and Novamed (acquired by SciClone NASDAQ SCLN). Before, Regina worked for Apax Partners, and built her extensive network in the global healthcare industry during her tenure at McKinsey. In the 90s, Regina gained initial insights into the fast-growing biotech sector as post-doctoral researcher at the MRC Cambridge UK. Regina studied chemical engineering in Vienna and holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry.
Board member
Serial entrepreneur with a background in drug discovery and development, corporate strategy, financing and management. Hans Schambye has an extensive experience in managing biotech companies, based on in depth biological understanding of diseases and pharmaceutical R&D.
Board member
Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen is the CEO of the Novo Nordisk Foundation.
He has a long career in Novo Nordisk, which he joined in 1991 as Head of Growth Hormone Research. In 1994, he was appointed Senior Vice President of Diabetes R&D, and in November 2000, he became Executive Vice President of R&D and Chief Scientific Officer. In this capacity, he was responsible for global drug and device research, CMC and global development, medical and regulatory affairs, and global safety within Novo Nordisk. During this tenure, he oversaw the development and approval of more than 20 medicinal products.
Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen is currently a member of the board of BB Biotech AG. He has been chairman of the board of the University of Copenhagen as well as President of the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences and served on the editorial boards of several international, peer-reviewed journals. In addition to this, he has been an Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, since 2000.
Education:
1991: DSc (Veterinary Science), the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark)
1989: Ph.D., the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark
1986: DVM, the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen
CEO, Professor, DVM, PhD, DSc
Scientific Advisory Board
Scientific Advisory Board
Meet the BII Scientific Advisory Board and read more about our continued search for a diverse board.
Dr. Robert Langer is one of 12 Institute Professors at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a widely recognized researcher in biotechnology, especially in the fields of drug delivery systems and tissue engineering.
He has been cited more than 325,000 times, and his h-index of 280 is the highest of any engineer in history.
He has more than 1,360 issued and pending patents worldwide, which have been licensed or sublicensed to over 400 companies.
Chair
Christina Smolke is a leader in the fields of metabolic engineering and synthetic biology.
Dr. Smolke’s early work pioneered the design and application of functional RNAs as tools for programming biological systems. Her recent work has pioneered the development of yeast biosynthesis platforms for complex plant-based alkaloids, leading to efficient, sustainable fermentation processes for essential medicines.
Dr. Smolke is a Professor (Research) of Bioengineering at Stanford University and CEO of Antheia, Inc, and has received numerous honors including Nature’s 10 and NIH Director’s Pioneer Award.
Member
Eran Segal is heading the Segal Lab with a team of computational biologists and experimental scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science.
His research focuses on the relationship between nutrition, health, and gut microbes in human individuals and his research group has extensive experience in machine learning, computational biology, probabilistic models, and analysis of heterogeneous high-throughput genomic data from various technologies such as next-generation sequencing.
Eran Segal has published over 150 publications and received several awards and honors for his work, including the Overton prize, awarded annually by the International Society for Bioinformatics (ICSB) to one scientist for outstanding accomplishments in computational biology.
Member
Feng Zhang is one of the pioneers in the development of CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing and a leader in the field of optogenetics.
He has a BA from Harvard and a Ph.D. degree from Stanford. He holds the James and Patricia Poitras Professorship of Neuroscience at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and professorship in the departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Biological Engineering at MIT.
In 2018, Feng Zhang was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Member
Mathias Uhlén leads a research group at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Biotechnology.
He is a part-time professor at the Technical University of Denmark and a guest professor at Karolinska Institutet. His research has led to more than 650 publications, and 25 start-ups have come out of his group at KTH– four of which have IPO’ed – two in Sweden, one in Norway and one in Korea.
In 2010, he founded the national center for molecular bioscience, SciLifeLab, in both Stockholm and Uppsala, which bring more than 1000 scientists together
Member
Sang Yup Lee is a biochemical engineer and is well known for the development of microbial strains and the bioprocess for the fermentative production of many chemicals including polylactic acid, succinic acid, and gasoline.
He is Distinguished Professor at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and is Co-Chair of Global Future Council on Biotechnology at the World Economic Forum.
Lee has ties to Denmark through his position as Scientific Director at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability.
Member
Governance
Governance
The BioInnovation Institute Foundation is a Danish commercial foundation that operates independently of any other interests than those described in the Foundation’s objects.
The Foundation is governed by the Danish Foundation Act, and the Danish Business Authority therefore supervises the Foundation.
In addition, the BioInnovation Institute Foundation is covered by the Recommendations on Foundation Governance of the Committee on Foundation Governance.
Code of Conduct
Code of Conduct
BioInnovation Institute Foundation affiliated persons must protect and comply with the principles covered by BII’s Code of Conduct and they must be able to work in a safe and nurturing working environment. To support this, the Foundation promotes an organization-based culture of integrity driven by respectful and ethical behavior among the BioInnovation Institute Foundation, its affiliated persons and the activities it funds.
