Management Team
Laura Chirica, PhD
CEO
Laura Chirica has more than 20 years of experience from commercial positions in both startups and multinationals from the life sciences and diagnostics industries. Her previous positions include Chief Commercial Officer at Immunovia AB, VP Sales and Marketing at Euro Diagnostica AB (now Svar Science), Director Purification Technologies Europe at Sartorius Stedim, Global Marketing Director at Dako A/S, and Global Marketing Program Manager at GE Healthcare.
Education: PhD in Biochemistry, MSc in Biochemistry and BSc in Biotechnology.
Other significant appointments: Board director at Gradientech AB and Senzagen AB
Maximilian Ottosson
COO and co-founder
Maximilian Ottosson is one of the founders of Cellevate and led the company between 2016-2022. He has been heavily involved in the development of the company’s technology, from generation one through three. In his previous role as CEO, Maximilian was instrumental in securing the funding that has allowed Cellevate to mature to its current level. Finally, Maximilian has taken the company to its first sales, building and maintaining important relationships with both academic and industrial customers.
Education: MSc in Engineering Nanoscience
Albin Jakobsson
CTO and co-founder
Albin Jakobsson is one of the founders of Cellevate. He has been in charge of technical development since the company’s foundation in 2014. Albin has been instrumental in developing and managing Cellevates customized solution platform, resulting in several of the products in the company’s portfolio.
Education: MSc in Engineering Nanoscience
Hans Richter, MBA
CFO
Hans Richter has more than 35 years of experience as manager in multinationals and start-ups within tourism, food, life science and consultancy businesses. His previous positions include CFO at Wrigley, VP Finance at Albihns and Ervaco, CFO at Huddinge University Hospital, and CFO at Pharmacia Biosensor as well as various board positions in tourism, care and education companies. Hans present positions include CFO for hire at Klaria and Adventure Box, both companies listed on NASDAQ First North.
Education: MBA and BSc in Business Finance
Other significant appointments: Board member at Icehotel, Gällöfsta and Access Duo.
Linda Dexlin Mellby, PhD
VP Research and Development
Linda has more than 10 years of experience from leading research and development organization in the diagnostic industry. Linda brings extensive experience in building and leading the organization through startup process into commercialization phase, driving development programs from early research phases through optimization and validation to product launch and sales. Her previous position includes Vice President Research and Development at Immunovia AB.
Education: PhD in Immunotechnology, MSc in Chemical Engineering
Nils Uhlin
Sales & Marketing Director
Nils has more than 20 years of experience in sales and marketing management in the life science sector, both from smaller and growing organizations, as well as established and large market leaders within bioinformatics and diagnostic fields. Throughout his career, Nils has been driving global product marketing teams, strategic account management as well as regional sales projects and product management groups. His previous positions include Sales Development Manager Immunovia, Marketing and Product Manager Menarini Nordics, Director Product Marketing Instruments and Software Dako (now “Agilent Technologies”) and Director Product Marketing GE Healthcare.
Education: BSc in Biochemistry
Annika Andersson
VP QA/RA
Annika Andersson has more than 30 years’ experience within the life science and diagnostics industry, with the main focus on regulatory affairs and quality assurance of in vitro diagnostic medical devices. Annika contributes with extensive experience in establishing Quality Management Systems and global regulatory strategies. Her track record includes leading successful regulatory approval processes of medical devices for IVD CE marking as well as IVD approvals in Canada, China, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Russia and 510(k) clearances in the USA. Her previous positions include: QA/RA Director Immunovia AB and Regulatory Affairs Manager EuroDiagnostica AB (now Svar Science).
Education: Biomedical Scientist
Board of Directors
Mats Leifland
Chairman of the Board
Mats Leifland has more than 30 years of experience from positions in both multinationals and startups from building & construction, real estate, life sciences and tech industries. His previous positions include Assistant Corporate Treasurer at Trelleborg AB , CFO at Peab AB, CEO at Brinova Fastigheter AB and CEO at Medicon Village Science Park.
Education: BSc. in Business, Lund University
Other significant appointments: Chairman of Waltero AB and Qvantum Industries AB. Board member of Kaunis Iron AB
Mala Valroy
Board member
Mala Valroy is an Investment Manager at Industrifonden with a focus on Deep Tech, with a focus on tech bio, climate tech and advanced computing. Over the last decade, Mala has built a strong foundation in multiple technologies as a scientist and held senior leadership roles in Fortune 500 companies scaling innovations in emerging markets. As a founder, operator, and board member she has worked with and advised startups in multiple sectors. She was previously the Head of Ericsson ONE, a venture studio that invested, scaled, and commercialized deep tech innovations with ICT applications with regional responsibility for Europe, Middle East, and Africa. She has also served as the VP of Corporate Responsibility at Atlas Copco, working to integrate sustainability into the company’s operations and strategy.
Education: Mala holds a M.Sc. in General Management from the Stockholm School of Economics, and a M.Sc. in Biochemistry from Dartmouth College, an ivy league institution in the United States.
Mats Grahn
Board member
Mats Grahn has more than 30 years’ experience in top leading positions in multinationals as well as startups in life science, diagnostics and biotech industry. His previous positions include Head of Process Chromatoghrapy Systems Unit, Vice President Laboratory Separations Division and VP Product Marketing Protein Separations at GE Healthcare – now Cytiva, Corporate Vice President Marketing at Dako A/S, now part of Agilent Technologies and CEO, Immunovia AB.
Education: MSc in Engineering Physics
Bertil Lindmark
Board member
Bertil has more than 30 years’ experience in life science – with globally leading roles in AstraZeneca (Global Vice President for Respiratory and Immunology), Global Head of R&D at Almirall and since 2015 Chief Medical Officer in ASLAN Pharma, eTheRNA Immunotherapies and in Galecto, developing drugs in multiple therapy areas globally. Bertil is a non-executive Member of the Board at ALK-Abelló and professor at the Gothenburg University.
Education: MD PhD background and 10 years of academic medicine with specialist competence in Internal Medicine and in Gastroenterology.
Maximilian Ottosson
Board member
Maximilian Ottosson is one of the founders of Cellevate and led the company between 2016-2022. He has been heavily involved in the development of the company’s technology, from generation one through three. In his previous role as CEO, Maximilian was instrumental in securing the funding that has allowed Cellevate to mature to its current level. Finally, Maximilian has taken the company to its first sales, building and maintaining important relationships with both academic and industrial customers.
Education: MSc in Engineering Nanoscience
Scientific and Industrial Advisors
Hans J Johansson
Hans J Johansson is Global Applications Director at Purolite Life Sciences, Llantrisant, Wales. He has spent more than 30 years in the Biotech industry. Most of the time in research and development at Pharmacia/Amersham/GE Healthcare with a special focus on design and applications of resins for large-scale chromatography. He frequently publishes in scientific journals and is the holder of more than ten patents in the area of resin design, and large-scale protein purification applications, especially in the area of Protein A resins and multi-modal chromatography. He is currently working with development and applications of novel resins for purification of Fc-fusion proteins or mRNA.
Education: BSc MSc Biochemistry Uppsala University, IHR Marketing Communications Program
Lars Montelius, PhD
Lars Montelius is one of the Founders of Cellevate. He is Professor Emeritus at Lund University and he is presently the Director General of INL, the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory, an intergovernmental research organization headquartered in Braga, Portugal. He has more than 30 years of experience in nanotechnology research and innovation. He was during 2003-2009 Dean of the Physics Department, Science and Engineering Faculties, Lund University, during 2009-2011 the Director for Øresund University & Øresund Science Region, being a cross-border cooperation between eleven universities, three regional authorities, two countries in the Øresund Region, and during 2007-2014 the Chair of the Swedish Technical Standardization Committee on Nanotechnology. Lars Montelius is the Past President of IUVSTA (The International Union for Vacuum Science, Technique and Applications) and Work Group Chair of EuMat, the European Technology Platform for Materials.
Education: PhD, Solid State Physics, MSc EE.
Other significant appointments: Founder and Director of the Board of Compacta AB, European NanoInvest AB, Embedded Nano AB, SciMont AB and Founder of WaterSprint AB.
Mats Lundgren, PhD
Senior Consultant at Phase2Phase Biopharma AB
Mats is a senior professional with more than 25 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry. He is currently Senior Consultant at Phase2Phase Biopharma AB. He has significant expertise in strategic development, cell culture production, purification and analytics of vaccines, cell and gene therapies and other ATMPs.
Prior to joining Phase2Phase he was the Applications Director at Cytiva/GE Healthcare and supported biopharma companies globally to produce new therapies more efficiently. He has held positions as scientist, team manager and VP at Pharmacia, AstraZeneca and smaller biotech companies. He has also managed the teams for Cell line and Upstream Process Development for monoclonal antibodies at a major pharma company.
Education: PhD from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and post-doc training at Imperial College School of Medicine in London.
Fredrik Johansson, PhD
Fredrik Johansson is one of the Founders of Cellevate. He is Associate Professor at the biology department at Lund University. He has more than 20 years of experience in bionanotechnology research and education. He is presently the director of studies in Biology, coordinator for Molecular Biology and prior to that he was director of the programme Master of Science in Engineering, Engineering Nanoscience. The main focus of research concern nerve regeneration, nanoparticles in life science and biointerfaces.
Education: PhD in cell biology, MSc in biophysics
Bo Forsberg
Bo Forsberg is a senior expert advisor and lecturer in Downstream Processing for the Pharmaceutical industry worldwide. Bo has performed high tech service for several prominent biotech companies such as GE Healthcare, Astra Zeneca, Repligen, Novo Nordisk, BioInvent, Bio-Works, Hanbon and AGC Biologics. Bo started working with chromatography 1987 at Pharmacia Diagnostics designing and performing purification methods. After 23 years within the same company including 10 years of designing equipment for Chromatography, Bo moved to BioInvent International AB as Manager over Downstream Development and Manufacturing. Bo’s last position was Senior Technology Specialist and Subject Matter Expert at AGC Biologics AS/CMC Biologics AS as internal technical advisor worldwide. Since June 2018, Bo has been a senior consultant.
Education: Upper secondary technical school, Chemistry
Other significant appointments: Honorary Lecturer at Department of Biotechnical Engineering at University College, London, UCL.
Jean-Christophe Bourdon, PhD
Dr. Jean-Christophe Bourdon earned his PhD in cellular and molecular biology in 1997 at the Paris XI University, France. He is currently researcher and senior lecturer at the School of Medicine at Dundee University. He was co-director of the Inserm- European Associated Laboratory (Toulouse University, France) in 2006-2010 and was awarded the prestigious fellowship from Breast Cancer Campaign in 2012. He is internationally recognised to have pioneered the p53 isoform research field and is the holder of several patents for improving production of influenza viruses and vaccine seeds. His laboratory has developed diverse methods and scientific tools (antibodies, siRNA, small molecules) to detect and regulate expression of p53 isoforms in targeted cells.
Dr. Bourdon’s lab aims to decipher the molecular mechanisms of cell fate decision mediated by the p53 isoforms in response to cell signals and treatment. In translational research, Dr. Bourdon’s lab aims to establish the p53 isoforms as predictive biomarkers and to identify new therapeutic compounds targeting the p53 isoform pathways.
Education: PhD in molecular and cellular biology, Paris XI University, France
Véronique Chotteau, PhD
Associate Professor, Dr. Véronique Chotteau is the Principal Investigator of the Cell Technology group at KTH (The Royal Institute of Technology), Stockholm and Director of VINNOVA Competence Centre for Advanced BioProduction by Continuous Processing, AdBIOPRO.
Dr. Véronique Chotteau has more than 30 years of experience in mammalian cell culture including more than 10 years in biopharmaceutical industry (at Pharmacia Upjohn/Biovitrum, Stockholm, nowadays Swedish Orphan Biovitrum). She joined KTH in 2008, when she was offered to lead the animal cell cultivation activities, due to her expertise in cell culture and her industrial background. Her group is world-leader in high cell density perfusion of mammalian cell-based processes for biopharmaceutical production and is highly active in mathematical modeling of culture process, as well as in human stem cell bioprocessing.
Thierry Ziegler, PhD
Dr. Thierry Ziegler has been working in the field of biopharmaceutical development for the last 25 years. During this period, he overviewed multiple biopharmaceutical development activities in several companies such as Merck-Serono, Igyxos and Sanofi. More recently, he led CAR-T and started materials production activities at Cellectis.
During his career, Dr. Thierry Ziegler had the opportunity to work on multiple monoclonal antibodies as well as many other types of Biologics modalities ranging from recombinant proteins to CAR-T cells. He is familiar with the CMC and regulatory aspects of Biologics from clinical development to Life Cycle Management.
Dr. Thierry Ziegler is a Bioprocess engineer and got his PhD at the Georgia Institute of Technology (USA).
Yvonne Genzel, PD
Dr. Yvonne Genzel is senior scientist in the Bioprocess Engineering group at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems (Magdeburg, Germany) since 2001, and is leading the upstream processing team focusing on virus production with mammalian cells. In 2009 she received her habilitation (PD) in “Upstream processing issues in influenza vaccine production using animal cell technology” at the Otto-von-Guericke-University, Magdeburg. She has more than 90 peer-reviewed papers on vaccine production using cell culture-based processes.
In 2013 she was elected to become an Executive Committee member of the European Society of Animal Cell Technology (ESACT). Since 2016 she co-organizes the 3-day ESACT course on “Cell culture-based viral vaccines”. Intensified viral vaccine manufacturing using suspension cell lines in perfusion systems, in two-stage bioreactors or hollow fiber bioreactors are currently of main interest. Additionally, macrocarrier systems using packed bed reactors for adherent cells are tested. The first steps of downstream processing are evaluated to move towards process integration as early as possible.
Dr. Genzel and her team aim to create a knowledge platform for viral vaccines to support process development towards next generation biomanufacturing.
