Rudy Dekeyser

Dr. Rudy Dekeyser was a co-founder of VIB in 1995 and Managing Director of the research institute for 17 years, where he was responsible for all business development. Together with a highly professional team he managed to build a large patent estate, executed over 800 R&D and license agreements and established many biotech companies such as Devgen (acquired by Syngenta), CropDesign (acquired by BASF), Ablynx (acquired by Sanofi), ActoGeniX (acquired by Intrexon) and Multiplicom (acquired by Agilent). Rudy was a catalyst in the development of a strong cluster in Flanders by uniting the actors in the life sciences association FlandersBio, building bio-incubators and triggering the establishment of bio-accelerators.

In 2012 he joined LSP to manage the newly established Health Economic Funds, one of Europe’s largest venture capital funds investing in medtech and digital health companies in Europe and the US. Throughout his career Rudy has been chairman and non-executive director at many company boards and is currently board member at Sequana Medical, Lumeon, reMYND, Celyad and EMBLEM (EMBL’s business arm). He also co-founded ASTP (the European association of science and technology transfer professionals) and Oncode (cancer research institute in The Netherlands). Rudy is member of the advisory board of multiple foundations active in advancing life sciences research and its translation into benefit for society.

Dr. Rudy Dekeyser has a PhD in molecular biology from the University of Gent.