Cristianne Rijcken is the founder of Cristal Therapeutics and serves as Chief Scientific Officer of the company. Dr. Rijcken’s PhD thesis provided a strong basis for Cristal Therapeutics, and she was awarded multiple grants and prizes including the Simon Stevin Gezel Award in 2008 and the Knowledge for Growth Inspiring Young Scientist Award in 2014. She is (co-) author of ~ 50 scientific publications and co-inventor of all patents and patent applications of Cristal Therapeutics. Cristianne is selected as Limburg Businesswoman of the Year 2017 because of her innovative mind-set, the perseverance upon translational activities and her entrepreneurial attitude. Dr. Rijcken is pharmacist by training and holds a PhD degree in Pharmaceutics from Utrecht University (The Netherlands). 

Apart from working as the CSO at Cristal Therapeutics, currently, Cristianne provides as consultant strategic, CMC and translational support to start up companies in life sciences such as TTxD NL BV and Simmunext. She also functions as mentor for Talent Accelerator Program – a talent & mentoring program of eight months in which junior bioBusiness professionals can learn from experienced executives and experts by means of training, coaching and consultative sessions.