Archives: Speakers

Øystein Dahl Hem is the Company’s CFO, a position he has held since the middle of 2019. He also serves as the company’s Interim CEO since August 2021. Øystein has extensive management and industry experience after working with business-to-business sales and marketing in Telenor Norway for four years, two of which within the video collaboration industry, two years working with strategy for Telenor Norway and two years working for McKinsey. Øystein holds a Master of Science and Technology degree in Industrial Engineering from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) (2010).

Ike Ogbaa, MD is currently the US Medical Affairs Lead for New Products and Integrated Diabetes Care at Sanofi. His current role is to develop the US medical affairs strategy for Sanofi’s pipeline of New Diabetes Drugs, Devices and Digital health Solutions. He has extensive experience throughout the Pharmaceutical value chain in Clinical Pharmacology, Drug Development, Field-based Medical Affairs and Home-Office Medical affairs. He has worked for a CRO, small biotech and 2 large Pharma companies.

Based outside Ghent, Belgium, Stefaan Van der Meulen heads the Global Clinical Business Development team for NAMSA. Prior to this he was leading the Syntactx offices in Europe as a Managing Partner also overseeing business development for the company on a global scale.

Stefaan began his career in the pharmaceutical industry working on early- and late-phase clinical research studies of various sizes and indications. While working at Novartis, he was a global co-driver for their risk-based monitoring initiative, a best practice that is now being applied at Syntactx. At Cordis, a medical device developer and manufacturer, Stefaan concentrated on first-in-human and pivotal studies before transitioning to Core Laboratory and product specialist activities. He also has experience in product life-cycle development from both a clinical and marketing perspective.
Stefaan holds a Master of Biomedical Sciences from Ghent University in Belgium. He is fluent in Dutch, English, and French, and proficient in Italian and German.

Dr. Sofia de Achaval Wied is an epidemiologist with over 10 years of experience in clinical research. She began her career in Houston in psychosocial research and transitioned into research administration roles at leading academic research institutions in the Texas Medical Center. This year she expanded her clinical research and drug development experience by joining Tvardi Therapeutics, where she serves as the Executive Director of Research and Development.