Andreas Brecht, Ph.D.

Before joining Covalys, Dr. Andreas Brecht was head of an applications group at Cytion SA (Lausanne), acquired in 2001 by Molecular Devices Corporation. His previous positions were related to strategic marketing ("Lab-on-a-Chip", with Agilent Technologies) and technology development (with Schaerfe System, Germany).

Dr. Brecht spent several years at the University of Tuebingen as a leader of a team of up to 10 scientists working on analytical biochemistry. His team was involved in various collaborations with several companies. Dr. Brecht did research leading to a PhD in biophysics after his graduation in biochemistry and cell biology at the University of Tuebingen (Germany).

Dr. Henri Zinsli, Chairman and Co-founder
 
Henri Zinsli (Chairman, Co-founder) spent over 33 years with Ciba-Geigy (now merged to Novartis), mainly with their Pharma Division. Until 1995 he was Head of Ciba-Geigy's Corporate Business Development and later a member of the Executive Committee of Ciba Specialty's Pigment Division (New Ventures). He is a co-founder, former CEO and today's Chairman of Discovery Partners International AG, co-founder of Zeptosens of which he was Chairman until 2002, and co-founder of Speedel Pharma. He is a board member of publicly traded Icoria, Inc. (formerly Paradigm Genetics, Inc.) and of Plasmon Plc., and of the biotech start-up Inpheno AG.

Henri Zinsli holds a PhD in Economics and Business Administration (General Management, Marketing).

Prof. Kai Johnsson, Inventor and Co-founder
 
Kai Johnsson is assistant professor for Bioorganic Chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology (EPFL) where he heads the laboratory for protein engineering. Prior to joining EPFL, he was a junior group leader at Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany, after spending three and a half years in the laboratory of Prof. Peter G. Schultz (University of California, Berkeley) as a postdoctoral research fellow. Since the start of his PhD thesis, Kai Johnsson's research interests focus on biological chemistry and in particular enzyme mechanisms and protein chemistry. He is the inventor of the SNAP-tag technology.

Kai Johnsson studied chemistry and did his PhD with Prof. Steven Brenner at ETH Zurich.

Dr. Diego Braguglia
 
Diego;Braguglia joined VI Partners in January 2003 as a partner focusing on life-sicence and biotech investments.He brings over 10 years of experience in life science, medical devices and pharmaceuticals in Europe and the US. Prior to his entry into the VC industry, Diego has held various managerial positions in the pharma-ceuticals and medical devices sectors, as well as in biotech start-ups in Europe and in the US.

Diego holds an M.Sc. in Microbiology from the Biocenter of the University of Basel and a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the Swiss Cancer Research Institute (ISREC) in Lausanne. He is fluent in English, French, Italian and German.

Daniel Kusio

Daniel Kusio is CEO of BV Holding AG, a Swiss Private Equity and Venture Capital company. Daniel Kusio is on the board of several BVgroup portfolio companies and a member of the Ypsomed Innovation Foundation's board. Daniel furthermore acts as Ypsomed Holding AG's head of investor relations. Prior to joining the BVgroup, Daniel Kusio was Chief Information Officer (CIO) at a leading industrial firm and previously held the position of country manager in Malaysia for an internationally active telecommunications company.

Daniel graduated from the University of Berne, Switzerland, with a Master in Business Administration and Information Technology.