Dr. Collinson is Executive Chairman of Tioga Pharmaceuticals and a partner at Forward Ventures.

Previously he was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Aurora Biosciences (acquired by Vertex Pharmaceuticals). He held senior management positions at GlaxoWellcome (now GlaxoSmithKline) and Baxter International, and was a consultant with The Boston Consulting Group.

He has served on the boards of companies including Affinium Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Debiopharm), Cabrellis Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Pharmion, now part of Celgene), Conforma Therapeutics (acquired by Biogen), Essentialis (acquired by Capnia, now Soleno Therapeutics), GeneOhm Sciences (acquired by Becton Dickinson), NovaCardia (acquired by Merck & Co), and Vertex Pharmaceuticals.

Dr. Collinson received an MBA from Harvard Business School and a PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of Oxford.


Dr. Hartmann is the Head of the Corporate Patent Department for Merck KGaA. Dr. Hartmann joined Merck KGaA in 1990 and worked in the Licensing Department as well as the Business Development Unit before becoming the Head of Patent Pharmaceuticals in 2000.

Dr. Hartmann received a degree in chemistry from the University of Giessen, Germany in 1987 and earned a PhD in chemistry from the same institution in 1990. An expert in patent law, Dr. Hartmann has lectured extensively on due diligence, patent strategy, licensing and exploitation of IP. In addition, Dr. Hartmann is a core member of Merck KGaA’s Strategic Innovation Process, a project that seeks to take products that are not part of Merck’s core business and bring them into start-up companies financed by venture capital.


Dr. Niedel is a Managing Director of New Leaf Venture Partners, a firm that invests in life science companies.

Prior to joining the venture industry in 2002, Dr. Niedel was Chief Science and Technology Officer for GlaxoSmithKline and from 1995 to 2001 he was a member of the board of directors of Glaxo Wellcome plc with responsibility for Global Research and Development, Information Technology and Product Strategy. From 1988 to 1995 he was Vice President Research and Senior Vice President Research & Development for the US subsidiary of Glaxo.

Before joining the pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Niedel was Professor of Medicine and Chief of the division of Clinical Pharmacology at Duke Medical School, where he had completed an Internal Medicine residency and a Hematology-Oncology fellowship. He received the MD and PhD (Biochemistry) degrees from the University of Miami, was a Searle Scholar, and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (London).


Dr. Muenchbach is a Partner at BB Biotech Ventures. Previously, he was Partner at BioMedinvest and Investment Advisor at HBM Partners. At BioMedinvest, he led several of the firm's investments, and served on the board of portfolio companies. Before the merger of HBM Bioventures and NMT New Medical Technologies, he was Investment Manager at NMT, where he was focusing on international private equity investments in biopharmaceutical and biotechnological companies. Before NMT, Dr. Muenchbach gained experience in strategic marketing at Sanofi-Synthelabo.

Dr. Muenchbach holds a PhD in Protein Chemistry, a MSc in biochemistry and a Master in Economics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich.