After 15 years as CEO of PharmaZell Group, Dr. Oliver Bolzern stepped down in July 2021 to focus on Treemera as his next growth project. As CEO of PharmaZell he grew the company from two to four production sites in Europe and India, increased sales ten times to €200M and worked with four different private equity investors. He founded PharmaZell in 2006 via a management buyout of Noveon GmbH & Co KG with a private equity investor. Bolzern started at Noveon in 2002 as the Managing Director. Prior to this he was with Siegfried AG, initially as plant manager in Switzerland and later as Director of Operations for the two sites in the USA. He started his professional career at Ciba-Geigy (later Novartis) in development and production both in Switzerland and the UK.
Dr. Oliver Bolzern earned his Ph.D as a chemical engineer at the ETH Zurich.
Mag. Ortwin Ertl is founder and CEO of Annikki GmbH, a company specializing in cell free redox biocatalysis. In 1999 he founded IEP GmbH, a profitable technology company with a focus on bio-reduction processes for the production of chiral hydroxy compounds, and was its CEO through 2006. From 1995 to 1999 Mr. Ertl was consultant for several biotechnology companies, and he headed Phyton GmbH, which was engaged in scale-up activities for the manufacture of Paclitaxel (a leading cytostatic drug). Prior to this he worked in marketing of pharmaceutical active ingredients and in technology marketing with Helm AG, Hamburg.
He has an MBA from the Vienna University of Economics and Business.
Prof. Dr. Ernst-Günter Afting is a member of the Biotechnology Advisory Committee to the Minister of Economics of the State of Bavaria. He served on supervisory boards of entrepreneurial biotechnology companies and was scientific advisor to several companies, including Siemens Medical Solutions, Olympus Europe and Biotest. Afting was President of the German Research Center for Environmental Health (GSF) in Munich from 1995 until 2006, one of the biggest national research centers in Germany. From 1993 to 1995 he was President and CEO of Roussel Uclaf in Paris, a subsidiary of Hoechst AG. Professor Afting had previously held various executive positions within Hoechst AG, including Chairman of the Pharmaceutical Division (with 35,000 employees worldwide), CSO of world-wide Pharma Research and Member of the Board of Behring-Werke. Prof. Afting was a member of the Advisory Committee on Science and Technology to Chancellor Kohl from 1996 to 1997 and was a Member of the National Advisory Committee on Health to the Ministers of Science/Technology and Health from 1996 to 2005.
Professor Afting holds degrees in Medicine and Chemistry (M.D., Ph.D.) and is a professor emeritus of the medical faculty at the University of Goettingen.