Marek trained as a medical doctor in Poland and followed his scientific curiosity through Austria, Poland and Belgium, where he is now an FWO PhD fellow at the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology, working on melanoma biology in the lab of Jean-Christophe Marine. Working at the interface of medicine and discovery science, he became drawn to the entrepreneurial side of the Belgian life-science ecosystem and to the question of how academic research reaches patients. That interest led him to build community around it: he is a founder of Nucleate Belgium, which connects bachelor and master students, PhD researchers and postdocs to biotech entrepreneurship, and he organises the Translating Science seminar series, bringing people who have made the move from the bench to industry, venture capital and consulting into direct conversation with researchers. 

I am Maria Fonseca, a bioengineer and currently Portfolio Lead and Co-founder at Obulytix. Although originally from Portugal, I've spent my entire professional career in Belgium, working at the intersection of science, innovation, and business. Today, I focus on advancing Obulytix's mission to develop next-generation antibacterial biologics by shaping portfolio strategy, guiding program development, and driving the collaborations needed to maximize the value and impact of our pipeline.

Catarina Pereira is a Scientific Business Analyst at Hyloris Pharmaceuticals in Liège, where she evaluates new product opportunities.Before joining industry in 2025, Catarina worked in academic research in Portugal. She studied Biology and Applied Microbiology at the University of Lisbon, and worked on tuberculosis epidemiology, bacterial persistence in food safety, and host–pathogen interactions in nosocomial infections. During her PhD in Biology at the University of Lisbon, she shifted towards data and systems biology, leading the development of CyFi-MAP, an interactive molecular disease map, and a database CyFidb for cystic fibrosis.Along the way, she discovered that what she enjoyed most was connecting scattered information into a bigger picture. That insight led her to industry. In 2025 she moved to Belgium to join Hyloris Pharmaceuticals as a Scientific Business Analyst, where she applies her scientific background to evaluating new product opportunities.