Board of Directors

Rudy Dekeyser (Chairman) is vice general director of VIB (Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology) and manager of VIB’s technology transfer department. He has been board member at Devgen and CropDesign and is board member at Ablynx, Cardio³, Pronota, Actogenix, EMBLEM (the EMBL tech transfer company), FlandersBio (the Flemish biotech cluster) and the Center for Agricultural Research. He is also co-founding board member of the European Association of European Science and Technology Transfer Professionals (ASTP) and guest professor “innovation management” at the Ghent University. Dr. Dekeyser obtained his PhD in biology at the University of Ghent.

Katleen Verleysen (CEO) was, prior to joining Pronota, one of the founding scientists and Group Leader of the Analytical Department of Serenex, Inc. , a US-based biotech company acquired by Pfizer in 2008. She is board member at the Center for Medical Innovation (CMI). Katleen holds a B.Sc. in Chemistry and a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Ghent. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Medical Center of Duke University (Durham, NC) in the Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology, where she was responsible for the set up of a Proteomics Core Facility.

John de Koning (non-executive director) joined LSP in 2006 and became partner in 2009. He currently also serves on the supervisory board of Skyline Diagnostics (NL) and has board observer positions at Prosensa (NL) and BMEYE (NL). John started his career at Semaia Pharmaceuticals (NL). In 2003, Semaia Pharmaceuticals was acquired by Hybrigenics (F), and John became Director of Target Discovery and then Managing Director of Semaia. In addition, he was a member of the management team responsible for technology transfer at a large oncology consortium of leading Dutch scientists funded by the Dutch government, called the Cancer Genomics Center. This is a center of excellence of the Netherlands Genomics Initiative. John has a Masters degree in molecular biology from the University of Utrecht and a PhD in oncology from the Erasmus University of Rotterdam. After his PhD, John received a prestigious fellowship from the Dutch Cancer Society to work at the UCSF Cancer Center in San Francisco. His results were published in numerous leading scientific journals, including Nature Genetics. In addition to these achievements, John is inventor on several patents.

Jim Van heusden (non-executive director) is a senior investment manager at GIMV and focuses on investments in Life Sciences. He currently serves on the board of Actogenix (Belgium) and has been a board member at CropDesign (acquired by BASF). Prior to joining GIMV in 2001, he was working as a senior scientist at the department of Oncology Drug Discovery at Janssen Pharmaceutica, a Johnson & Johnson company, where he also served on the research management committee of the collaboration with Rigel Pharmaceuticals (US). He holds BSc and MSc degrees in chemistry and biochemistry from the University of Antwerp (Belgium) and a PhD in molecular and cellular biology from the University of Maastricht (The Netherlands).

Ruth Devenyns is Investment Director at KBC Private Equity and has a Masters Degree in Applied Economics (Ghent University, 1986). She joined KBC Bank’s Economic Research Department in 1986, where she covered several industries including the chemical & pharmaceutical industry. In 1992, she moved to the bank’s Corporate Finance Department. In 1995, she was asked to start up KBC Securities' equity research team, where she gradually specialized in biotechnology. She was actively involved in a number of IPO’s and private placements. In 2001, Ruth moved to the buy side and is currently managing KBC Private Equity’s investments.