From New York to Heidelberg: The Conversation Continues -Scaling Science Startups
After the successful launch in New York City, MilliporeSigma, BioLabs, Opentrons & Nucleate bring you the story of one of NYC`s biggest biotech success stories!
We aim to bring together founders, leaders, and key community members for an energizing night of meaningful connection.
We will also discuss the current state and future of scientific innovation. A little bit about our speakers:
Dr. Laura Matz is the Chief Science and Technology Officer for Merck, driving innovation and digitalization in Merck across the 3 business sectors, Life Sciences, Healthcare, and Electronics. Serving as an Executive Vice President within Merck, she is responsible for the corporate innovation teams, including new digital business models. Until early 2025, Laura was in addition CEO of the data sharing platform company, Athinia®, which focuses on enabling secure data sharing within the semiconductor ecosystem. She possesses 20 years of experience in semiconductor manufacturing and a decade of experience in running semiconductor materials businesses.
Prior to becoming the Chief Science and Technology Officer, she was a Senior Vice President within EMD Electronics (previously Versum Materials and Air Products Electronics division). She has always been a key contributor to the growth in semiconductor materials, driving a strong R&D presence to enable business growth.
Laura is a strong advocate for young talent in science and engineering. As a leader, she builds teams to find innovative solutions to the problems facing humanity and implement them with the discipline and rigor to create the greatest impact. In 2023, she joined SEMI Impact for Skills as a board member, a governance program to support upskilling and reskilling, to attract new talent, and to unlock EU and national/regional funding. In addition, she is a board member of AIChE (American Institute of Chemical Engineers), a leading organization for chemical engineering professionals.
Alexander Pattberg is the Co-Managing Director of Nucleate Heidelberg & the southwest of Germany. Over the past couple of years he was involved in the organisation of several life sciences entrepreneurship events and active in the effort to allow "New genomic technologies (NGT i.e. CRISPR-Cas) im plant breeding in the EU.
In his current role for Nucleate, he supports founders in the biotech space navigating their first-steps and connects the fragmented ecosystem in the southwest of germany. In parallel he is acquiring his PhD at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg, where his research focuses on new tools to study cell death pathways in neurodegenrative diseases and cancer.
Ann-Kristin Müller obtained her postgraduate degree in biology at the University of Marburg and her PhD in infectious diseases at the University of Heidelberg in 2004. After a Postdoc position and an EMBO fellowship at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, she continued her scientific career as an independent group leader in Malaria immunology at the universities of Würzburg and Heidelberg.
During this time, she founded an Exist-sponsored spin-off company to take the result of her research to the market. In 2018, Ann-Kristin ventured out of academia to work in the field of fostering start-ups and cooperation between academic research and the life-science industry, first at the University of Applied Sciences Mannheim, then as the BioRN project manager responsible for coordinating the launch of BioLabs Heidelberg and since January 2022 she simply kept on doing that – now for BioLabs as the current site lead of the first European location of BioLabs in Heidelberg.
BioLabs Heidelberg is a co-working lab and office incubator, offering young entrepreneurs who want to turn their life-science research into a product the infrastructure they need, providing them with fully equipped and managed lab space.
Dan Lord brings more two decades of hands-on experience in the commercial field. Focused on liquid handling and laboratory automation, spanning handheld tools to advanced robotic platforms.
As Sales Director, EMEA at Opentrons, he combines deep technical expertise with commercial leadership, helping pharmaceutical and biotech organisations modernise workflows and unlock scalable, automated solutions. Dan specialises in translating complex customer needs into practical, efficient automation strategies, working closely with scientists, lab managers, and senior stakeholders across Europe. Known for his engaging, collaborative style, he is passionate about making automation more accessible and empowering teams to achieve reproducible, high-throughput results.
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