Sir Richard Sykes FRS (Chairman)

Sir Richard was appointed Chairman & Chief Executive of Glaxo Wellcome plc in May 1997 and subsequently as Chairman of GlaxoSmithKline from 2000 to 2002. He is currently Rector of Imperial College London.

Sir Richard was knighted in 1994 for his services to the pharmaceutical industry. He holds a wide variety of positions on UK government and international scientific committees and recently accepted the role of Chair of the WHO International Advisory Board which oversees the International Clinical Trials Registry Platform.

Sir Richard was awarded a PhD in Microbial Biochemistry from Bristol He is a visiting Professor at King's College, London and at Bristol University. In 1999 he received the Hamao Umezawa Memorial Award of the International Society of Chemotherapy in recognition of outstanding contributions in the field of chemotherapy. Sir Richard is a member of the Temasek Holdings International Panel and the International Advisory Panel of the A*Star Biomedical Research Council (Singapore).

He served as President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1998-99, and holds a number of honorary degrees and awards from institutions both in the UK and overseas. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He is a Fellow of Imperial College School of Medicine, King's College, London, a Fleming Fellow at Lincoln College, Oxford, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, an Honorary Fellow of the University of Wales, Cardiff and an Honorary Fellow of the University of Central Lancashire.

Jean-Philippe Tripet, CFA

Mr. Jean-Philippe Tripet is founder and Managing Partner of Aravis Venture, an internationally active venture fund focused on biotech investments. Jean-Philippe Tripet has over 15 years experience as portfolio manager and financial analyst. He has a degree in business administration from the University of Geneva, did graduate studies in San Diego (USA) and is a Chartered Financial Analyst.

In 1994 Jean-Philippe Tripet co-founded the LO Fund that became one of the most successful healthcare funds in Europe under his leadership. He has supervised over 70 private biotech investments. Until 2001, he was a Senior Executive Vice-President and member of Group Management at Lombard Odier & Cie, Geneva.

He founded Aravis Venture I in 2002.

Since 1994 Jean-Philippe Tripet has participated actively in the launch and financing of many successful start-up companies such as Modex, NovImmune, Cytos, Genedata, Esbatech and Glycart. He is also Chairman of the board of directors of Evolva and Athelas, Vice Chairman of Symetis, and a director and Omeros.

Chu Swee Yeok

Ms Swee-Yeok CHU is the Chief Executive Officer of Bio*One Capital, an investment management company of Singapore Economic Development Board (SEDB) which oversees global investments in the biotechnology and medical devices & technology. Bio*One manages one of the largest biomedical fund in Asia, and has some 60 portfolio companies worldwide. Apart from Merlion, Ms CHU's holds several other board directorship responsibilities, including S*BIO, an oncology drug discovery & development company; A-Bio Pharmaceuticals, a biologics process development & clinical contract manufacturing company, CombinatoRx Singapore, a joint-venture focusing on developing infectious disease drugs; Lonza Singapore, a joint-venture in commercial scale contract manufacturing; and the Novartis Institute of Tropical Diseases (NITD) in Singapore.

Anja König, PhD

Dr. Anja König is the Managing Director Asia Pacific for the Novartis Venture Fund. Before that, she held the position of assistant to the Chairman and CEO of Novartis.

Prior to joining Novartis she was an Associate Partner at McKinsey and Company in New York City, a global consultancy, where she was a leader in McKinsey's North American Pharmaceutical Practice and a knowledge expert on pharmaceutical research and drug discovery. She worked with companies in many different areas in health care, including pharmaceutical drug discovery, clinical development and sales and marketing, biotech, medical devices, and healthcare services.

Dr. König has extensive experience working in the US, Europe and Emerging Markets. Dr. Anja König is a scientist by training and holds a PhD in physics from Cornell University.

Boon Swan Foo

Mr Boon is Managing Director of the Agency for Science, Technology & Research (A*STAR) in Singapore. He also serves concurrently as Executive Chairman of A*STAR's commercialization arm, Exploit Technologies Pte Ltd.

Previously, Mr Boon was Deputy Chairman and CEO of Singapore Technologies Engineering Ltd and was also the Chief Financial Officer and Board Member of Singapore Technologies Pte Ltd, the parent company of Singapore Technologies Group of Companies.

Mr Boon is currently serving on the Boards of the Health Sciences Authority, Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, Singapore Polytechnic, Temasek Laboratories, Management Development Institute of Singapore and NTUC Income Insurance Cooperative Ltd. He is also a Member of the Dean's Council of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and holds an Adjunct Professorship at the Nanyang Technological University's College of Engineering.

Mr Boon is a registered Professional Engineer and a member of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Singapore (ICPAS). He is also a Fellow of the Chartered Association of Certified Accountant (UK)-ACCA. He holds an MBA from the National University of Singapore. Mr Boon was awarded the Singapore Business Award for Outstanding CEO in 2000, one of Singapore's prestigious business awards.

Tony Buss, PhD

Dr Tony Buss is the President and CEO of MerLion Pharmaceuticals. He has held senior research and management positions with several major pharmaceutical and agrochemical companies, including 7 years with Pfizer, 6 years with Schering AG (both in the UK and Germany) and 13 years with GlaxoSmithKline. He joined the Centre for Natural Product Research, Singapore, in 2000 as Head of the Centre, before its incorporation as MerLion Pharmaceuticals Pte Ltd in 2002. Dr Buss is a graduate of the Royal Institute of Chemistry, London. He was awarded an MSc from the University of East Anglia in 1978 and received his PhD in 1981 from the University of Cambridge, England. He is also an Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore, Department of Chemistry.

Klaus Brandau, PhD

Dr. Brandau is an active board member for a variety of organizations. In 2001, he retired after a distinguished career at Bayer AG culminating as Corporate Senior Vice President, a role he held for over a decade. From 1989, Dr. Brandau headed the International Cooperation and Licensing Department of the Pharmaceutical Business Group. His responsibilities encompassed the global in- and out-licensing activities in the areas of Research and Development as well as Marketing and Sales. Previous to this position, Dr. Brandau held various management positions in international drug development. Between 1970 and 1971, Dr. Brandau was a visiting scientist in the laboratory of Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Julius Axelrod, at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA.

Clemens Doppler, PhD

Dr Doppler has been a director at 3i since 2000 and has 10 years of international business experience in the pharma and biotech industries. He started his career in R&D and has worked in business development. He held senior position at Boehringer Mannheim (now Roche) and was in the management team of Swiss Biotech company ANAWA Laboratories AG, which was successfully sold in 1997 to Phoenix International Life Science (now MDS Inc.) a world leading healthcare and CRO services provider. Dr Doppler specialises in biotechnology and life science technology investments and is a member of 3i's core healthcare team. As well as serving on various boards, Dr Doppler is a member of the German biotech analyst association DVFA. He is also a fellow of the German Cancer Research Centre. Dr Doppler holds degrees in marketing and economics and a MSc and Ph.D. in molecular biology, chemistry and microbiology from the University of Heidelberg.

Harald Labischinski, PhD

Dr. Labischinski was formerly the CEO of Combinature AG and held a number of influential academic positions including Vice-Director Robert Koch-Institute of the Federal Health Organisation of Germany until his move to Bayer AG 1993. There he held positions including Department Head Antibacterial Therapy, and Director Anti-infective Research. In 2004 he became Senior Research Fellow Anti-infective Research. He is author of over 160 publications and patents. He has been President (2003-2005), and remains vice president, of the German Society for General and Applied Microbiology (VAAM), and Board Member of the German Association of Biological and Biomedical Societies (VBBM).