Bjarne Sørensen is a director of front-end innovation at Phillips Medisize, based in the company’s development centre in Denmark. With more than 35 years of experience within product, strategy, and business development, Bjarne has a very visible track record within different business areas. At Phillips Medisize, he participates in customer projects, typically involving electronic injectors and connected health systems. He is also deeply involved in new electronic platform programs, especially on conceptual, technical, and sustainability aspects.

Phil is the Executive Director Pharmaceutical Development & Head of Drug Delivery Devices at Ionis Pharmaceuticals. Phil has over 20 years of R&D, Product Development and Manufacturing combination product experience. He has been instrumentally involved in device strategy, delivery innovation, tech transfer-scale up and setting up manufacturing sites in the North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia.

Prior to Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Phil worked for Xeris Pharmaceuticals, Kaleo Pharma, Apricus Biosciences, Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Bristol Myers Squib, AstraZeneca and Medtronic in various roles from Principal Engineer to Executive Leadership in the successful development and commercialization of 14 Combination Products.

Phil holds two issued patents in medical and drug delivery devices and has multiple patent applications. His education includes undergraduate studies Industrial Engineering Technology from San Diego State University, with an emphasis in plastics/polymer science. Prior to his life science career, for eight years, Phil was involved in aerospace engineering in the development of the US Army Apache Helicopter, US Navy/Marines F-18 Super Hornet, US Navy A-12 Avenger, and multiple UAV aircraft used in today’s US defense strategy.

Mehul Desai, PharmD, MBA, has vast experience in medical and clinical affairs across the pharmaceutical space. At Enable Injections, he leads medical and clinical programming to support publication, new partnerships, and regulatory approvals. Prior to Enable Injections, Mehul served as Associate Medical Director for argenx, driving the strategic direction, supporting clinical trial execution, and contributing to business development activities across various therapeutic areas. Previous experience includes field medical assignments in rare disease, nephrology, and neurology for Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, nephrology and hematology for Alexion Pharmaceuticals, and post-doctoral fellowship work in Medical Affairs for Johnson & Johnson. Mehul also served as a clinical instructor of Pharmacy Practice and Pharmacy Administration at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia.

Mehul is a published author in peer-reviewed journals, focusing on drug formulation and on-body delivery systems. He regularly delivers podium presentations at industry conferences, contributing to scientific discussions on novel drug delivery technologies.

Mehul holds a bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and Business Foundations from Indiana University, Bloomington, a Doctor of Pharmacy from Purdue University, and a Master of Business Administration in Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Business from the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia.

Deep S Bhattacharya is a Principal scientist working with Drug Product Design and Development, Pharmaceutical R&D Andover since November 2019. He received his PhD from the University of Nebraska Medical Center, College of Pharmacy in Pharmaceutical Sciences, with a focus in engineering polymer-protein conjugates and polymeric nanoparticles using computational chemistry, biophysical tools, formulation developments, to in vivo characterizations in multiple animal models. After joining Pfizer, he has worked with multiple gene therapy, recombinant proteins, multimodal antibody programs from preclinical through commercialization. He is experienced in the formulation development of recombinant protein vaccines and high concentration mAbs. His areas of interest include biophysical assessment of proteins, utilizing higher order spectroscopic tools for structural determination of biologics, subcutaneous assessments of biologics, early & late-stage development of biologics and business strategies for developments of biopharmaceuticals. 

Philipp Richard has been with Ypsomed since 2009 in various roles in product- and key account management with pharma companies to develop and bring to market innovative self-injection systems. He studied electrical engineering at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland. Before joining the world of medical devices, he has worked in the area of contactless bearing technology for high-speed turbomachines.

Since 2011, his main focus has been on defining platform-based product offerings and on implementing customized injection devices with a growing base of pharma customers. As key account manager, he has managed the transition from project to market supply including ramp-up with several autoinjector customers.

Ypsomed Delivery Systems continues to focus on the development and manufacture of next generation pens, autoinjectors, patch injectors, smart device technologies and therapy management services.

Glenn Svedberg has spent 30 years in the manufacturing industry, in managerial and mainly commercial roles. He started at Volvo Group in 1990 as a trainee in purchasing and continued in 1994 to Ericsson as a marketing manager for a production unit. He then moved over to the contract electronics manufacturing industry, where in 1999 he joined Flex in northern Europe, assuming a role as business development director and part of the acquisition team as well as being a key account manager for ABB globally. At Flex he had different roles leading up to becoming managing director for the Scandinavian operations with some 1,400 people in five factories. In 2005 he moved over to the plastic packaging industry and joined Rexam (today part of Berry Global) as a managing director for sites in Sweden and Denmark.

Since 2007 he has been part of Nolato and served as managing director for Nolato Cerbo as well as head of pharma packaging and located in UK for two years when integrating Nolato Jaycare 2012-2014. He is dedicated to lean principles as well as quality and for four years, in parallel to his MD role, he led the medical excellence program across all medical solutions sites, globally. He has a genuine interest in sustainable development and has been laying the foundation for the work leading up to a Ecovadis silver status recognition for Nolato. In June 2021 he assumed the role as group sustainability director at Nolato Group and vice president of business development for medical solutions. Since 2023 he has been heading the technical design centres in three regions: Europe, North America, and Asia.

Claus studied pharmacy and holds a PhD (University of Freiburg, Germany) and MBA (Henley Business School, UK). He is Qualified Person according to EU Regulations and holder of various expert qualifications.

For more than 30 years he worked for top ten global pharma companies Roche and Sanofi. He has held various roles in the field of injectable drug delivery systems for biotherapeutics, the first disposable pen for a once-daily insulin, with expanding responsibilities: QA/QC, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Key Account Management of device partner companies, Global Medical Device Surveillance. As Global Device Leader and Drug Device Integrator he has set up cross-functional technology teams on 'Large Volume Drug Delivery' which has become the On-Body Delivery platform for Drug Device Combination developments like the subcutaneous administration of isatuximab (Sarclisa®).

Since October 2024 Claus is an Independent Drug Device Expert to provide guidance and expertise on complex injectable Drug Device combination products with special focus on integrating medical devices and large volume, highly viscous drug formulations as well as connectivity and sustainability.

Asmita Khanolkar has a master’s degree in materials science and engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, MA (USA). With over 25 years of manufacturing experience specialising in the medical device and pharmaceutical industries, she has managed various device projects from concept to commercial launch. Her product portfolio includes single-use, wearable and implantable devices, drug-device, device-biologic combination products for drug delivery, biotech, biotherapeutics, and pharmaceutical applications. She has held various engineering and management roles in new product development, manufacturing engineering, advanced quality planning, operations, supply chain, and product life cycle management. Her current responsibilities include a corporate leadership role supporting multiple sites for bringing complete solutions to the customers, working closely within the Oval Medical Technologies, Cambridge Pharma, and SMC Ltd. global sites in early technical engagement through commercialisation for combination products and pharmaceutical services.

Dr. René Holm is a professor in pharmaceutical physical chemistry at the University of Southern Denmark. After receiving master’s and PhD degrees in pharmaceutics from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, he started his carrier in the pharmaceutical industry at H. Lundbeck in 2001 and changed to Janssen in 2016. René Das worked within pharmaceutical development, formulations for non-clinical testing in drug discovery, physical chemistry, and material science covering both small and large molecules. In 2021, René engaged in a career change and became a full professor. René is (co-) author of more than 220 book chapters or original articles in peer-reviewed journals and patents in the field of biopharmaceutics, preformulation, formulation, and physical pharmacy, and is co-inventor on 13 published patents.

Cedric is the Co-founder and Chief Changemaker at Be Circular at not-for-profit platform to develop and orchestrate circular economy solutions for the pharmaceutical industry.

Cedric holds a bachelor in Pharmaceutical Technolohy and a Master in Medical Device Design from the University of Applied Science Bern and Stanford University with a specialization in Human Centered Design.

He started his career in Novartis and Actelion in Chemical R&D before he joined Johnson&Johnson in 2005 where he held different roles leading projects related to establishing customer centric, sustainable solutions, and services across new and established products working with teams in Supply Chain, Research & Development and Commercial. In addition, he led J&Js Circular Device Program where he was responsible for the establishment of the Safe Returns device collection program and the design and deployment of the first industrial scale disassembly line for used autoinjectors before leaving the company to establish Be Circular in 2025.

Yvonne Limpens is a managing human factors specialist with Emergo by UL’s Human Factors Research & Design (HFR&D) team based in Utrecht, The Netherlands. She has been with the team since 2013 and has experience delivering HFE services to the medical device and pharmaceutical industries. Yvonne leads and oversees research activities and helps clients develop key HFE documents for their design history files. Furthermore, she advises and trains clients on how to apply HFE during product development to meet regulators' expectations. Yvonne holds a BSc in industrial design and an MSc in human technology interaction, both from Eindhoven University of Technology (NL).

Gea is a biomedical engineer passionate about integrating medical technologies safely and securely. Since joining Flex in 2019 as a Software Quality Engineer, in 2024 she was entitled with the role of Cybersecurity Authority. In this role, she coordinates cybersecurity activities within Flex's Healthcare Solutions division, align Quality Management System with current standards, perform threat modeling and risk assessments, and promote product security awareness. Gea Bianchi recently began collaborating on the development of ISO/IEC 81001-5-2 (as part of TC 62/SC 62A/JWG 7).

Dr. Christian Proff is a materials scientist with degrees from Chalmers, Gothenburg (S) and Darmstadt (D) Universities of Technology, and a PhD from Grenoble (F) University (INPG) with extensive experience in materials research in Sweden (Chalmers), USA (Argonne National Laboratory), and Switzerland (Paul-Scherrer-Institut). Within device and packaging development at F. Hoffmann - La Roche, he has been working in verification engineering since 2018 on improvements in CCI testing and development of new device test methods.