Betterfit
Zeev Shoham
Zeev Shoham
Professor Shoham was born and raised in Jerusalem, Israel. He received his M.D. degree from the Hadassah Medical Center in 1981. Later completing, his residency at Kaplan Hospital in Rehovot, and his fellowship in infertility and in vitro fertilization at Tel – Hashomer Hospital and MIDDLESEX Hospital in London, UK. Since 1988 he has specialized in a wide range of treatments including:
Fertility treatments, in vitro fertilization, oocyte retrieval preservation and freezing, donor eggs and sperm, care for women during pregnancy and follow-up and treatment of postmenopausal women.
In 1991 Prof. Shoham received an award from the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology for the best scientific research that year in Europe for his work on stimulating sperm production by adding GH to treatment with gonadotropins in patients with hypogonadotropic hypogonadism.
Professor Shoham has published over 140 papers in the field of Reproductive Medicine, and his publications had won international awards. In addition, he has contributed chapters to numerous books. He is the editor/ author of the textbook, Female Infertility Therapy: Current Practice (1999), and one of the four editors of the textbook, Assisted Reproductive Techniques, which is at its sixth edition.
Professor Shoham is the co-founder of IVF-Worldwide the most comprehensive website on in-vitro fertilization. Professor Shoham has been organizing internationals medical conferences for the past 18 years and is a lecturer in many conferences in the field.
Biotech
Jorge Parra
Jorge Parra
Founder and CEO at Biotech, Inc. Engineer with more than two decades of experience in designing and producing products for medical use in IVF. Responsible of creating the most used cryopreservation straw in US, present also in other geographies. Combines engineering expertise with an entrepreneurial mindset to design innovative products.
Conceivable
Alejandro Chavez Badiola
Alejandro Chavez Badiola
A specialist in human reproduction, successful in seizing viable opportunities for innovation, and committed to transforming Human Assisted Reproduction. Founder and CIO of Hope IVF Mexico, Founder of IVF 2.0, an Artificial Intelligence start-up, and Co-Founder of Conceivable Life Sciences, a start-up dedicated to building the world’s first automated IVF laboratory for democratised access to assisted reproduction.
Fertilis
David K. Gardner
Professor David K. Gardner, AM, FAA
David is a Pioneer in human IVF. He is a Distinguished Professor in the School of BioSciences, University of Melbourne and the Scientific Director of Melbourne IVF.
He completed his PhD (1987) at the University of York, with Henry Leese. In 1988 he moved to Harvard Medical School to work with John Biggers, after which he moved to Monash, Australia, in 1989 to work with Alan Trounson. In 1997 became the Scientific Director of the Colorado Centre for Reproductive Medicine in Denver, where his work on human embryo culture conditions and blastocyst transfer revolutionised how human IVF is performed today.
His “Gardner Grading system” for the human embryo is used worldwide as the standard selection system in human IVF.
In 2007 he was appointed Professor and Chair of the Zoology Department at the University of Melbourne and promoted to the level of Distinguished Professor, School of BioSciences in 2018.
In 2017 he became the Scientific Director of Melbourne IVF.
In 2017 in recognition of his many significant contributions to reproductive sciences he was elected as a Fellow into the Australian Academy of Science (FAA) and further was the recipient of the Distinguished Researcher Award from the American Society of Reproductive Medicine.
In June 2022, he was awarded the Order of Australia (AM) (one of the highest civil honours in Australia) for his significant contributions to reproductive medicine.
He has published over 300 papers and chapters and has edited 16 books on IVF and embryology, culminating in over 33,000 citations.
OWLO
Paul Balondrade
Paul Balondrade
Paul Balondrade is CEO & co-founder of OWLO. He is engineer by training and did his PhD at Institut Langevin, where he participated in building the basis of the technology now developed by OWLO.
Somos Ovum
Einar Tribuci
Einar Tribuci
U-Ploid
Alexandre Webster
Alexandre Webster
Alexandre Webster, PhD. is a Co-founder and the Chief Scientific Officer at U-Ploid Biotechnologies, a reproductive health biotech based in Oxford, UK. He is leading the development of novel therapeutics to treat age related oocyte quality decline, and improve fertility outcomes in women of advanced maternal age. Alex is reproductive biologist by background, specialising in molecular bioengineering in oocytes. He received his doctoral degree at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, and was an EMBO long-term post-doctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen, Germany.
Verso Biosense
Kate Rowley
Kate Rowley
Kate Rowley, PhD, BSc, MBA, is the CEO of Verso Biosense Limited and Exec Chair of Assemblify ltd. Verso Biosense is an intra-uterine monitoring company, and our mission is to better understand the uterine environment to improve women’s health. Our strategic focus is to generate, analyse and harness insights from the data from the intra-uterine environment.
Kate has an exceptionally broad life sciences experience garnered from a variety of roles spanning researcher to board member over her 30-year history in the Healthcare sector. She started her journey in commercialisation of science at the Scottish Association for Marine Science, leading on IP, licensing, commercial services and managing the business Incubator co-located with the research institute. She has spent much of her life sciences career in commercial executive roles leading business development and M&A activities in the health tech arena. Kate is an engaged investor and has held several Non-Exec Director and Chair roles, leading VC investment rounds in university spin outs though to growth stage companies.
