Speakers

Morten Bache has experience in both the academic and the private sector, and working on the intersection between them in defining research and development opportunities. He is currently Scientific Director of the Data Science & Quantum team in the Novo Nordisk Foundation. The Foundation’s main scope is to award grants to education, research, and innovation in the public domain and is one of the largest private foundations in the world. In Foundation, he works as a scientific expert, and he has been part of shaping the Foundation’s strategy within the natural and technical sciences areas. His core expert areas are quantum technologies, AI and data science, physics, applied mathematics, and technical sciences. He has also advised within health tech, energy, climate, carbon capture storage and utilisation.

Morten Bache is an engineer from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), with an MSc in applied physics (’99), a PhD in quantum nonlinear optics (’02), and a doctor habilitation degree in technical sciences (’18). Until 2018 he was an associate professor (tenured) at DTU, and with a research track record within quantum physics, photonics, and applied sciences. His research was at the interface between theory, simulations, and experiments, and to this end develop mathematical physical models and providing accurate numerical simulations of dynamical systems.

Baiba MILTOVIČA has been appointed in 2020 President of the “Transport, Energy, Infrastructure and Information Society” Section (TEN) of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC). At the same time, Ms Miltovica serves as Board Member of the Latvian National Association for Consumer Protection (LPIAA) and actively co-operates with the European Consumer Organization (BEUC) on the European Commission Horizon 2020 and DG Justice and Consumers projects. 

Juliane Marie Neiiendam is a dedicated engineer, civic leader, and European policymaker. As the Regional Chair of IDA, the Danish Society of Engineers, she champions innovation, digital inclusion, and well-being in Denmark’s engineering and STEM communities. Deeply committed to democratic engagement, she brings civic voices into legislative discussions on technology, equality, and civil society.

Since 2023, Juliane has been a member of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), representing civil society organisations. As rapporteur of Opinion SOC/834 — "AI, Big Data and Rare Diseases", she led the EESC’s guidance on leveraging AI ethically and equitably to revolutionise rare disease diagnosis and treatment across Europe.

In addition to her professional roles, Juliane serves on the Board of the Women’s Council Denmark, advocating for women’s leadership and gender-sensitive innovation in technology and policymaking.

At this conference, Juliane brings a unique blend of technical expertise, civic passion, and European-level policymaking — grounded in both Danish experience and EESC leadership — to explore how AI can empower civil society across EU member states.

Kenneth Bøgelund Ahrensberg is senior global policy advisor at the Danish Health Data Authority in the unit of strategy, pipeline and architecture. 

Focus on strategic issues related to eHealth, health data, eHealth financing, national strategies and European and international collaboration. Involved in the introduction of European Health Data Space in Denmark in collaboration with various stakeholders. Deep interest in the dynamics of organization coupled with the introduction of new technologies enabling an even more patient-centric healthcare service. Holds a masters degree in health economics.

Dumitru Fornea is Secretary General of the National Trade Union Confederation MERIDIAN from Romania and since 2007 is Member of the European Economic and Social Committee. Within EESC is member of the Section on Transport Energy and Information Society and member of the Section on External Relations.

Since 2007 when was apointed member and until now, he was rapporteur for the EESC’s opinions on following topics: “The importance of institutionalizing civic and social dialogue in EU candidate and partner countries”; “Moldova Growth Plan”; “Enhancing cooperation between civil society organizations in the European Union and Kazakhstan”; “Revision of the Weights and Dimensions Directive 96/53/EC”; “Digital identity, data sovereignty and the Path towards a just digital transition for citizens living in the information society”; “The Global Gateway”; “Revision of the EU Emission Trading System for Aviation”; “The societal and ecological impact of the 5G ecosystem”; “Critical Raw Materials Resilience”; “Single European Sky2+”; “Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on streamlining measures for advancing the realisation of the trans-European transport network”; “EU-Korea Free Trade Agreement – Trade and Sustainable Development Chapter”; “Indigenous coal in the EU energy transition”, “Living tomorrow. 3D printing - a tool to empower the European economy”, “Employability of young people – matching training with industry needs in an age of austerity”, “Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on establishing the Creative Europe Programme”, “The processing and exploitation, for economic and environmental purposes of the industrial and mining waste deposits from EU”, “The raw materials initiative: needs for growth and jobs in Europe”, “Non-energy mining industry in Europe”, “European rail network for competitive freight” and co-rapporteur for the EESC’s opinions: Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the European Council and the Council A more efficient and democratic decision making in EU energy and climate policy [COM(2019) 177 final] & “Civil society contribution to the review of the EU-Central Asia Strategy”.

In the period 2007-2010 he was member of the Governing Board of Eurofound. A graduated from the Faculty of Law, University of Bucharest, Faculty of Transport, Polytechnic University of Bucharest and a Master on "European Public Space", National School of Political and Administrative Studies, Bucharest. He speaks fluent Romanian (native), English, Spanish and French. Has limited knowledge of Italian, Portuguese and Russian.

Marco Marsella is Director for “Digital, EU4Health and Health Systems Modernisation” at the European Commission’s Directorate General for Health and Food Safety (DG SANTE). In this role, Mr Marsella oversees the implementation of the European Health Data Space Regulation, the implementation of the Health Technology Assessment Regulation, DG SANTE’s work on health system modernisation as well as the EU4Health Programme. 

Prior to his current position, Mr Marsella held various roles within the European Commission, including Head of Unit for "eHealth, Well-Being, Ageing" and Head of Unit for "Learning, Multilingualism, Accessibility" at the European Commission's Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT).

Holm Graessner has graduated in Biomedical Engineering, Cybernetics, Electrical Engineering, German Language and Literature, Philosophy as well as Business Administration. He received his PhD “Summa cum laude” in 2004 and, then, he obtained his MBA degree in 2008.

He has been Managing Director of the Rare Disease Centre, since 2010, at the University and University Hospital Tübingen, Germany. www.zse-tuebingen.de He is Coordinator (Lead PI) of the European Reference Network for Rare Neurological Diseases (ERN-RND, www.ern-rnd.eu). Together with Olaf Riess, he was leading the H2020 Solve-RD project on “Solving the unsolved rare diseases” (www.solve-rd.eu) and also co-leads the Clinical Research Network of European Rare Disease Research Alliance that has started on 1 Sept 2024. He is a founding member of the European 1 Mutation 1 Medicine initiative and member of the Board of Directors of the N-of-1 Collaborative.

In 2020, he has been appointed fellow of the European Academy of Neurology (EAN) and since 2025 he is a Commissioner in the Lancet Commission on Rare Diseases.

In 2023, he received the EURORDIS Black Pearl Award for Leadership and the first Martha and Wilfried Ensinger Award.

Ana Rath is a medical doctor with a background in general surgery and a Masters degree in Philosophy. She oriented her career to medical information and terminologies in 1997 and joined Orphanet (www.orpha.net) in 2005, where she was Manager of the Orphanet Encyclopaedia, then Scientific Director, and Director of Orphanet and Coordinator of the Orphanet network since 2014. Ana acted as the coordinator of RD-ACTION Joint Action from 2015 to 2018 and of the IRDiRC’s Scientific secretariat until 2017. She chairs the Orphanet Rare Disease Ontology (ORDO), and was member of the WHO’s ICD11 Revision Steering Committee. She coordinates projects on implementation of RD codification in EU member states (RD-CODE, OD4RD). She contributes to JARDIN Joint Action on RD data standardisation  and co-chairs the ERDERA’s Data Service Hub on data and resources ecosystem for RD research in Europe.

Virginie Bros-Facer returned to EURORDIS-Rare Diseases Europe in March 2024 to take on the role of CEO, after having previously served as the organisation's Scientific Director.

Virginie received her PhD in Neurosciences from King’s College London, UK followed by several postdoctoral research projects at the Institute of Neurology, UCL, London focused on testing therapeutic strategies for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. After leaving the lab, she worked for several research funding organisations in the UK including the National Institute for Health Research, the Medical Research Council and as Medical Director for Sparks, a medical research charity focusing on rare paediatric diseases.

Upon subsequently joining EURORDIS as Scientific Director, she took the lead on project development and patient engagement in rare disease research projects representing the voice of rare disease patients, including within the International Rare Disease Research Consortium (IRDiRC). Virginie led in the creation of the EURORDIS Winter School on Scientific Innovation and translational research, aimed at empowering people living with a rare disease to fight for their rights to a better and healthier future.

In 2022, Virginie joined Illumina as Associate Director for Medical Affairs, Europe, where she engaged key opinion leaders and centres of excellence to develop clinical evidence for genetic testing of rare and undiagnosed patients to drive clinical adoption of next-generation sequencing and implementation in patient care.

Cecilia Lövkvist is a Scientific Manager at the Novo Nordisk Foundation, where her focus areas include data science and artificial intelligence. Her research background spans physics, data science, and biology.

Aasa Feragen is a Professor at DTU Compute whose research aims to create technical solutions supporting Responsible AI with a particular focus on healthcare. Aasa serves as a member of the FNU council at the Independent Research Fund Denmark; she is co-PI for the Center for Basic Machine Learning Reesearch in Life Science, and she is a co-lead at the Collaboratory for Causality and Explainability at the Pioneer center for AI. Aasa is also CSO in the spinout company Prenaital A/S, developing AI assistants for strengthened acquisition and analysis of fetal ultrasound images.

Ole Winther (OW), PhD is professor and group leader in High dimensional biological data analysis/Machine learning at Dept. of Biology, University of Copenhagen (UCph) and professor in data science and complexity at DTU Compute, the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). 

OW is a leading expert on statistical artificial intelligence with research focus on basic machine learning method development and applications to the medical, physics and natural language domains. The current main focus is bioinformatics prediction tools and foundation models. 

OW works with text data in commercial settings within the medical diagnostic setting (findzebra.com) and the corporate (raffle.ai). OW has been engaged in education (started DTU deep learning course with presently 600+ students), continued education and industrial consultancies and public dissemination of AI.

Martin Bøgsted holds a background in mathematical statistics from Aarhus University and earned his PhD in biostatistics and computer science from the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University in Copenhagen. Following his doctoral studies, he served as assistant and associate professor at the Department of Mathematical Sciences, Aalborg University. His career path has also included experience in the telecommunications industry, where he worked as a technical project manager, further strengthening his expertise in applied data science and project leadership.

Currently, he serves as Professor and Head of the Center for Clinical Data Science, a cross-institutional initiative bridging Aalborg University and Aalborg University Hospital. The Center operates at the intersection of clinical practice and data science, and it is structured around three synergistic research groups: 1) Clinical AI, focusing on real-world clinical implementation, 2) Bioinformatics and Statistics, emphasizing machine learning modeling, and 3) Data Science Methods, dedicated to foundational methodological research.

He leads the Data Science Methods group, where their work centers on establishing national and international data science infrastructures and advancing probabilistic AI methodologies. Their aim is to rigorously model and account for the natural variability in patient trajectories and geographical exposure to disease. 

Theis Lange is Professor of Biostatistics and Head of the Department of Public Health at the University of Copenhagen. His research focuses on causal inference, mediation analysis, and the design of clinical and observational studies. He has contributed to high-impact medical research, including trials on cardiac arrest, COVID-19 treatments, and mental health. With a background in mathematics and economics, Theis bridges statistical theory and real-world health challenges. He also advises pharmaceutical companies and public health institutions, including Denmark’s COVID-19 response. His work aims to improve how we generate and interpret evidence in medicine and public health.

Jeppe G. Manuel joined Novo Nordisk in 2015 and have held various roles across the R&D organisation. His focus is on enabling health research, improving data access and utilisation, use of new technologies and external collaboration. He has 20 years of experience from the pharmaceutical industry within Clinical, Regulatory and Data Science working with topics such as Enterprise Content Management, Digitisation, Information Management, Data sharing, Governance, Data Ethics, Data Privacy, AI and Quantum. Jeppe is a Director in Novo Nordisk’s Data Science Outreach area, is a member of multiple industry networks and leads several of Novo Nordisk’s external engagements. Jeppe holds a master’s degree in Library and Information Science.

Matthias Christandl is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Copenhagen developing Quantum Software for a future Quantum Computer. He is the Center Leader of the Quantum for Life Center funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, Principal Investigator of the Center for the Mathematics of Quantum Theory (QMATH), and Chairman of the University of Copenhagen's Quantum Hub. He has previously held faculty positions at LMU Munich and ETH Zurich and holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge. Matthias Christandl is elected member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters and has chaired the Program Committee of the Conference on Quantum Information Processing (QIP) in the year 2019.

Timothy P. Jenkins is an Associate Professor at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), where he leads the Digital Biotechnology Lab. His research focuses on generative AI, automation, and quantum computing for the design of next-generation protein therapeutics. He has published extensively in leading journals on protein design, immunotherapy, and AI-driven discovery, and his work has been recognised with international awards and major foundation funding.

In addition to his academic role, Tim is co-founder of AffinityAI, a biotech startup developing AI-designed “Designerbodies” as custom binding reagents for diagnostics and therapeutics. He also co-founded DALSA, DTU’s new life science automation facility, and is a founding member of YATSI (Young Academy of Technical Sciences & Innovation), where he contributes to strengthening ties between academia, industry, and policy.

Passionate about bridging disciplines, Tim advocates for the responsible integration of advanced AI into healthcare and society. He contributes to policy discussions and public engagement on AI, biotechnology, and quantum technologies, with a particular focus on ensuring that innovation translates into tangible benefits for patients, industry, and civil society.