Helsinki Innovation Services (HIS), the commercialisation company of the University of Helsinki, has recruited five professionals with strong expertise in business development and intellectual property rights. The goal is to better support researchers in refining their innovations.
In the past two years, HIS has received a record number of invention and idea disclosures from researchers at the University of Helsinki. Many of them have advanced to Research to Business projects funded by Business Finland and the University for the purpose of surveying the market potential of the ideas.
“We are excited that our team is now gaining a strong group of professionals in commercialisation who will help us develop our operations and respond to the increasing number of inventions,” says Jari Strandman, CEO of HIS.
After a recent multi-million euro investment in innovation and entrepreneurship by the University of Helsinki, the number of promising ideas is expected to grow further in the coming years. As part of the investment, a smoothly functioning palette of innovation services is being established on the campuses. HIS, together with the University, is closely involved in this work.
“Our new recruits have extensive and diverse experience in business activities, which makes their expertise useful to researchers at all stages of the commercialisation path. We wish the new team members a warm welcome!”
Jami Mandelin will start at HIS on 15 February 2022 as the business development director in therapeutics. Jami brings us his extensive experience in the pharmaceutical industry (Novartis, Roche) and wide knowledge in early drug discovery and drug development. Jami joins the HIS team from Faron Pharmaceuticals, an AIM (London) and Nasdaq First North listed clinical stage biopharmaceuticals company. As the vice president of research and early development, Jami led the nonclinical development of Faron’s compounds, their Chemistry, Manufacturing and Controls (CMC) activities from process development to clinical manufacturing, and a biomarker programme including companion diagnostics for a novel humanised antibody, Bexmarilimab. Jami holds a PhD in biomedicine and the title of docent in cell biology from the University of Helsinki.
Sampsa Fabritius joined HIS in January 2022 as the business development manager in digitalisation and artificial intelligence. Sampsa’s expertise and education range from user research to lean market validation, and from software to financial business modelling. At Nokia Research Center, he led science to product projects, and as a startup entrepreneur and CEO he created a machine learning assisted audio service. Sampsa joins HIS with 20 years of experience from the forefront of digital product and services development. Sampsa is an Aalto MSc graduate and a passionate amateur futures research practitioner with special interest on digital ecosystems.
Elena Inguglia joined HIS in January 2022 as the business development manager in food sciences. She has worked as a food technology associate and technical head at Brinc, a venture capital and startup accelerator based in Hong Kong. She has over eight years of experience in the food industry with a focus on product development and novel food categories. She worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Teagasc, the Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority, and she holds a PhD in Food Technology (Ireland), a MSc Microbiology (Germany) and a BSc Biology (Italy).
Eino Markelin joined HIS in December 2021 as the business development specialist in life sciences. Eino is helping researchers in the field of life sciences to understand and actualise the commercial potential of their inventions. He holds a master’s degree in research commercialisation and has experience from the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Most recently prior to HIS he was working in sales for the optics and microscopy company Zeiss.
Soile Lempiäinen joined HIS in December 2021 as the IPR specialist. Soile has over 13 years of experience in various fields of intellectual property protection. She worked as a patent engineer at Nokia Mobile Phones and later at Patria Land & Armament. Before getting into the innovation and patenting world, she worked as a product manager defining requirements for future mobile networks. Soile holds a BSc in Telecommunication Engineering from Turku University of Applied Sciences.
Further information:
Jari Strandman, CEO
Helsinki Innovation Services HIS
Phone: +358 40 700 6968, jari.strandman@helsinki.fi