PdOC will be hosting Christian Tidona and Yair Benita at the Postdoc Centre @ Biomedical Campus on Wednesday 18th May, 12pm, for a talk titled 'Research career perspectives at the interface between academia and industry.'

All are welcome to join but spaces are limited to 40 attendees (due to room capacity) so sign-up here to secure your spot. 

As this is a lunchtime talk feel free to bring your own lunch 

Talk description:

Christian Tidona, the founder and managing director of the BioMed X Institute in Heidelberg, Germany, will talk about his journey as a scientist entrepreneur. In his talk, you will learn about the three success factors for innovation and what you should be looking for as a future innovator or entrepreneur. You will get first-hand advice on bridging the gap between academic biomedical research and successfully developing new therapies for the benefit of patients, as well as guidance on transitioning from academic research to building a pharma industry career or a startup company. Joining him will be Yair Benita, CTO of AION Labs in Rehovot, Israel.

Yair will talk about starting companies in the field of artificial intelligence applied to drug discovery & development, including the existing challenges in starting such technology companies. You will learn how AION Labs, an innovation lab founded by AstraZeneca, Merck, Pfizer, Teva, Amazon Web Services and the venture capital Israel Biotech Fund, plans to address these challenges and provide brilliant scientists with the ideal environment to get started and grow fast. AION Labs offers funding, access to private pharma data, mentoring from experts in the field and co-development of the technology with your future customers. If you ever thought of becoming an entrepreneur, join us to learn how to apply and become an AION Labs company.

Christian Tidona bio:

Christian Tidona is a biotech entrepreneur, business angel, and founder of the BioMed X Institute in Heidelberg, Germany. He studied molecular biology and received his doctoral degree in virology from the University of Heidelberg. Throughout his entire professional life, his focus was always to seed innovation at the interface between academia and industry. Christian is co-founder of BioRN, the cluster management organization at the center of one of the strongest biomedical innovation hubs in Europe, co-founder of the Heidelberg Institute for Stem Cell Technology and Experimental Medicine HI-STEM, member of the International Board of the Weizmann Institute of Science, and member of the Board of Directors of Yeda Research and Development, one of the world’s most renowned technology transfer organizations in Israel. Christian is married and father of two children.

Yair Benita bio:
Yair Benita is a computational biologist with advanced expertise in immune/oncology drug discovery and development. Throughout his career he developed computational algorithms and tools that extract biological knowledge from data and today he leads amazing interdisciplinary scientists in decoding data to extract biological insights that drive drug discovery and development. He strives to eliminate exploratory biological work and replace it with data driven testable hypothesis generation.