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Athina Ikonomidou, Eng, MBA
Life Sciences Business Development & Technology Transfer Expert Athens, Greece |
Athina is a Technology Transfer professional and entrepreneur specializing in Biotechnology & Life Sciences. She aspires to help develop successful Biotech startups in Greece and put the local ecosystem on the global map.
She holds a degree in Chemical Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. During her university summer jobs and her early career she realized that the Greek chemical industry was in need of serious restructuring and lacked the ability to incorporate innovations that could make it really competitive. This led to the decision of a career switch after the completion of a Master in Business Administration from the IESE Business School in Barcelona. In IESE the seeds of entrepreneurship were sown and during the semester she spent in Georgetown University she was briefly introduced to the Biotech industry.
Athina returned to Greece and worked as a consultant for Andersen Consulting (Accenture) and as CEO of CIL Hellas Ltd, a direct marketing company but after a proposal to get involved in a Telecom start up it became obvious that what she would rather do is work with technology driven startups. So, for the last 20 years she has worked with most Greek research centers and a number of individual university labs helping them commercialize the technologies they develop. She performs technology valuations for private companies, gives lectures on Fundamentals of Technology Transfer as part of various Master’s Programs organized by Health and/or Natural Science institutions, advices individual research institutions and the government on Technology Transfer and is an expert evaluator of Horizon 2020 programs.
She has been the Head of Operations & Tech Transfer at BSRC “Al. Fleming”, has collaborated with EkinisiLAB, the Business Development Incubator of the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises (SEV) and is currently an executive member of the Board of the Hellenic Pasteur Institute. In 2019 she co-founded ResQ Biotech a drug discovery/platform technology spin off company of the National Hellenic Research Foundation. ResQ Biotech has won the 2020 MIT Enterprise Forum Greece Startup competition and has been chosen by Nature Research and Merck Gmbh as a company to watch during their inaugural “The Spin-off Prize” competition.
In 2020 Athina has joined the Executive Council of the ARISTEiA-Institute for the Advancement of Research & Education in Arts, Sciences &Technology.
She holds a degree in Chemical Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. During her university summer jobs and her early career she realized that the Greek chemical industry was in need of serious restructuring and lacked the ability to incorporate innovations that could make it really competitive. This led to the decision of a career switch after the completion of a Master in Business Administration from the IESE Business School in Barcelona. In IESE the seeds of entrepreneurship were sown and during the semester she spent in Georgetown University she was briefly introduced to the Biotech industry.
Athina returned to Greece and worked as a consultant for Andersen Consulting (Accenture) and as CEO of CIL Hellas Ltd, a direct marketing company but after a proposal to get involved in a Telecom start up it became obvious that what she would rather do is work with technology driven startups. So, for the last 20 years she has worked with most Greek research centers and a number of individual university labs helping them commercialize the technologies they develop. She performs technology valuations for private companies, gives lectures on Fundamentals of Technology Transfer as part of various Master’s Programs organized by Health and/or Natural Science institutions, advices individual research institutions and the government on Technology Transfer and is an expert evaluator of Horizon 2020 programs.
She has been the Head of Operations & Tech Transfer at BSRC “Al. Fleming”, has collaborated with EkinisiLAB, the Business Development Incubator of the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises (SEV) and is currently an executive member of the Board of the Hellenic Pasteur Institute. In 2019 she co-founded ResQ Biotech a drug discovery/platform technology spin off company of the National Hellenic Research Foundation. ResQ Biotech has won the 2020 MIT Enterprise Forum Greece Startup competition and has been chosen by Nature Research and Merck Gmbh as a company to watch during their inaugural “The Spin-off Prize” competition.
In 2020 Athina has joined the Executive Council of the ARISTEiA-Institute for the Advancement of Research & Education in Arts, Sciences &Technology.
