Meet the Team

As Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Silvia Steyrer-Gruber is responsible for Coriolis Pharma’s operational leadership and future development. Silvia is working closely with the Board of Directors.

Her motivation is to support Coriolis’ clients in developing new therapeutics and vaccines, many of them in areas of unmet medical need. The profound scientific expertise, the strong client focus, and the ability to shape a highly attractive workplace for the deeply engaged team attracted her to join Coriolis in early 2022.

Before joining Coriolis, Silvia gained strong international leadership experience in renowned pharmaceutical companies. Most recently, she served as Managing Director Europe and Germany for Exeltis (part of the Insud Pharma Group), leading the European pharmaceutical business of the family-owned, Spanish Multinational Healthcare Group.

Silvia spent an important part of her career at Baxter Vaccines, working in Global, European, and local roles of increasing responsibility. Her passion was focused on preventing potentially life-threatening diseases and Baxter’s engagement in Pandemic Preparedness Planning. Before this, Silvia also held roles in Kwizda Pharma and Serono.

Silvia holds a degree in International business administration from the University of Innsbruck, Austria. She also spent one year of her studies at the Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain.

Dr. Andrea Hawe is the Chief Scientific Officer at Coriolis. She is an expert in drug product development for biologics with a strong scientific background in protein formulation, surfactant and particle characterization, and lyophilization process technology. Andrea has published more than 40 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters.

At Coriolis, Andrea is responsible for Science & Technology in close collaboration with Dr. Tim Menzen. She also leads the Coriolis Scientific Advisory Board. Andrea supports the business development and projects teams, the scientific advisors, and her internal team of scientific reviewers in developing new formulation concepts and designing the best project strategy for our clients. She continuously works to improve Coriolis’ scientific processes, scientific knowledge management, and staff training.

Andrea values Coriolis for the opportunity to work with our clients worldwide on developing very exciting and novel biopharmaceutical drug products. She is also passionate about creating a positive and motivating working environment where each team member’s contribution is encouraged to shape Coriolis Pharma’s future.

Her background is as a pharmacist with a PhD in Pharmaceutical Technology from the LMU Munich. After her PhD thesis, she continued her career as a postdoctoral scientist at the Leiden Academic Center for Drug Research (LACDR) in Leiden (The Netherlands). She was awarded a Veni grant (NWO, The Netherlands) to develop novel approaches for aggregate analysis. She joined Coriolis from the very beginning as a member of the founding team and has been supporting the company since 2008.

Dr. Tim Menzen is Coriolis’ Chief Technology Officer (CTO). He is a trained pharmacist who received his PhD from Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich, Germany.

Tim joined Coriolis in 2014 and is responsible for internal research projects and scientific relations, including collaborations with partners from industry and academia. He has co-authored over 20 publications, including book chapters and articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Johannes Clemens is the Chief Commercial Officer at Coriolis. He is responsible for expanding Coriolis’ worldwide activities and services, including client business and establishing new collaborative partnerships. Johannes joined Coriolis in 2023.

Before this, Johannes was responsible for global business development at Vetter Pharma, an international CDMO, since 2010. He grew the global late-stage and commercial business by establishing new clients and collaborative partnerships and driving the development and launch of new products and services.

Johannes started his professional journey as the Managing Director of Smatos, a clinical trial management IT solutions provider.

Dr. Frank Schaubhut is the Chief Operating Officer at Coriolis. Frank is a trained pharmacist and received his PhD in pharmaceutical technology from the Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich, Germany.

He gained several years of experience as a pharmacist before joining Coriolis in 2008, first as head of project management and later as head of operations.

Dr. Gerhard Sax is the Unit Leader Program Management at Coriolis. Gerhard is a trained pharmacist who received his PhD from Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich, Germany. He joined Coriolis in 2011, where he has held various roles and contributed to its success as Client Project Manager, Head of GMP Quality Control, and Business Unit Manager for analytical services under GMP.

Gerhard has been responsible for implementing new services and processes, such as establishing a GMP QC laboratory, implementing ATMP/S2 facilities, improving safety processes under GMP and GRP, and rolling out project management software.

André Steingröver is Chief Financial Officer (CFO) at Coriolis. He is a business economist with many years of experience in the healthcare sector.

After studying business administration at the University of Münster, he began his career at the auditing firm Curacon in Münster, where he worked as a consultant advising hospitals and other non-profit organizations.

Between 2016 and 2018, André was Head of Budget and Controlling at the NRW State Cancer Registry, where he was responsible for setting up billing with the statutory health insurance funds and the reporting system of the newly founded clinical cancer registry. André joined Coriolis in 2018. In 2021, he was granted power of attorney.

Niels Kimmel is the Unit Leader IT at Coriolis. In this role, he is responsible for aligning information technology with the Coriolis strategic direction for growth.

Before joining Coriolis in 2023, Niels held the role of Chief Information Officer since 2011 in an international engineering software company, transforming IT to growing global requirements.

Dr. Bodo Brocks is the Unit Leader of the quality department at Coriolis. The unit is responsible for QA and QC oversight of GMP analytical services as well as for quality in research and development.

Bodo has more than 25 years of experience in biotechnology and held Director Analytical Development, Head of QC, and Director QA positions at the German biotech company MorphoSys AG. Bodo joined Coriolis in October 2021.

As Member in the Board of Directors, Dr. Michael Wiggenhorn is responsible for the strategic development of Coriolis Pharma.

His motivation lies in linking scientific research with the development of modern drugs and vaccines. At Coriolis Pharma, he creates the scientific and entrepreneurial conditions under which (bio)pharmaceutical innovations are created and developed to market maturity.

Dr. Michael Wiggenhorn holds a degree in pharmaceutical engineering (University of Applied Sciences Detmold) and a master’s degree in biopharmaceuticals (MSc. Biopharmaceuticals) from Leiden University in the Netherlands. He also holds a PhD in Pharmacy/Pharmaceutical Technology (Dr. rer. nat.) from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, Germany. Here he also developed the strategic foundations for Coriolis Pharma.

With Coriolis Pharma, Dr. Michael Wiggenhorn succeeded in establishing a professional network through which scientists from a wide range of disciplines contribute their individual expertise and experience to the development of innovative drugs and vaccines. Even as a start-up, the pharmacist, who holds a doctorate, focused on bundling the competencies of each individual employee in a targeted manner in order to use this networked know-how to meet customers’ requirements for high-quality, modern medicines. He consistently developed his entrepreneurial strategy in view of the company’s advancing growth.

In this way, Coriolis Pharma has become one of the world’s leading independent service companies for the research and development of (bio)pharmaceutical drugs.

Prof. Dr. Paolo Arosio is an expert in protein aggregation and biophysical properties of biologicals. Since 2016, he has been a Tenure Track Assistant Professor for Biochemical Engineering at the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. He received his doctoral degree from ETH Zurich in 2011, and between 2012 and 2016, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, UK.

His special interests are developing innovative technologies for characterizing and understanding protein interactions, self-association, phase separation, and aggregation. His studies have broad implications for both protein aggregation disorders and the development and formulation of biologicals. He is the author of over 90 peer-reviewed articles on the topic and is regularly invited to international conferences on protein engineering. He served as a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences. He has been named “Influential Researcher 2018” by the Industrial Engineering Chemical Research ACS. In 2020, Prof. Arosio received the prestigious ERC Consolidator grant on protein phase separation.

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Frieß is an expert in protein formulation development, stability and processing, drying technologies including freeze-drying and spray-drying, and drug delivery. He has been a professor of Pharmaceutical Technology and Biopharmaceutics at LMU Munich since 2001.

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Frieß has collected more than 30 years of experience in pharmaceutical technology while working at the University of Erlangen (Germany), Genetics Institute – now Pfizer (Andover, MA, USA), and the University of Illinois (Chicago, IL, USA). Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Frieß is the co-editor of the EJPB (European Journal of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics) and has published over 150 research papers, patents and book chapters.

Prof. Dr. Gideon Kersten is a vaccinologist with over 35 years of experience in vaccine development. His special interests are in the characterization and formulation of biologicals. He joined the vaccine division of the Institute for Public Health in the Netherlands in 1985, where he was involved in developing new vaccines and improving existing ones. These included vaccines against polio, influenza, respiratory syncytial (RS) virus, Neisseria meningitidis type B and pertussis. Prof. Kersten was responsible for formulation development and vaccine characterization.

Since 2012, he has held a special professorship in vaccine development at Leiden University in the Netherlands. In 2017, Prof. Kersten became the Chief Scientific Officer of Intravacc, a vaccine R&D institute. In 2020, Prof. Kersten joined Coriolis. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers and book chapters and supervised 10 PhD students. He is a frequent lecturer at universities, and during the Corona crisis, journalists frequently contacted him to comment on vaccine-related topics.

Dr. Bruce Kerwin has worked in biotechnology for 30 years and is a recognized protein formulation and drug product development expert. Before joining the Scientific Advisory Board of Coriolis, Dr. Kerwin worked for multiple companies, including Baxter Hemoglobin Therapeutics, Amgen, Just-Evotec Biologics, and Umoja Biopharma. Dr. Kerwin led numerous scientific research and project teams developing novel solutions to formulation problems such as high viscosity, high concentration and protein co-formulation while successfully bringing drug candidates through development from pre-IND to commercialization.

His work on large and small-volume parenterals included recombinant hemoglobin, cytokines, monoclonal antibodies, antibody-drug conjugates, PEGylated proteins, glycosylated and non-glycosylated proteins, oncolytic viruses and lentivirus. Dr. Kerwin was also intimately involved with alternative drug delivery systems such as slow-release and nanoparticle formulations. His research has yielded over 60 research publications and book chapters in a wide array of areas relating to protein science and formulation development, including protein stabilization, polysorbate degradation, photodegradation, protein phosphorescence, and high throughput biophysical screening. Dr. Kerwin is an inventor on multiple patents and a member of the editorial advisory board for the Journal of Pharmaceutical Science.

Prof. Dr. Olivia Merkel is an expert in targeted RNA delivery to treat cancer, inflammatory diseases, and viral infections, focusing on pulmonary administration. She has been a Professor of Drug Delivery in the Department of Pharmacy at LMU Munich in Germany since 2015.

Prof. Dr. Merkel is the president of the Controlled Release Society German Local Chapter and the chair of the CRS Focus Group Transdermal and Mucosal Delivery. The European Research Council, Bavarian Research Foundation, Volkswagen Foundation, Daiichi-Sankyo Europe and AbbVie fund her research. From 2015 until 2017, Prof. Dr. Merkel headed research labs both in Detroit and Munich. From 2011 until 2017, she was an Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutics and an Associate Faculty Member of Oncology at Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA, and a Scientific Member of the Molecular Therapeutics Program and Faculty in the Cancer Biology Graduate Program at Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit, MI.

Prof. Dr. Merkel received several awards, including the PHOENIX Pharmacy Award, APV Research Award, Princess-Therese of Bavaria Award, an ERC Starting Grant, the Galenus Foundation Technology Award, the Young Investigator Award from the College of Pharmacy at Wayne State, the Young Pharmaceutical Investigator Award granted by the European Federation for Pharmaceutical Science, an invitation to the Lindau Nobel Laureates Meeting, the Carl-Wilhelm-Scheele-Award by the German Pharmaceutical Society (DPhG) and the award for the best PhD thesis at Philipps-Universität Marburg. Prof. Merkel is the author of over 80 peer-reviewed articles, 15 book chapters and the editor of two books. She served as an NIH reviewer from 2014-2015, is a standing international member of the Swiss National Science Foundation review board, Editorial Board member for the Journal of Controlled Release, the European Journal of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics, Molecular Pharmaceutics, Advanced NanoBiomed Research, Pharmaceutics, Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica B, and an honorary member of the Académie des Alpilles.

Prof. Dr. Reza Nejadnik brings experience and expertise from academic and industrial work in the field of drug product development for biopharmaceuticals. Reza is currently a faculty member of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Experimental Therapeutics at the University of Iowa.

His research is focused on protein pharmaceuticals, their formulation and characterization, and the interaction of biologics with interfaces. His topics of interest include the delivery, handling and manufacturing processes of protein therapeutics. Reza received his PhD from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands in 2009. Following a few years of research in the area of proteins, nano and biomaterials at The University of Texas, Northwestern University and Radboud University Nijmegen, Reza joined the Leiden Academic Center for Drug Research to co-lead a European public-private partnership project (COMPACT) that addressed the current challenges with formulation and delivery of macromolecules. In the four years of the COMPACT project, Reza’s research focused on the characterization and understanding of protein aggregation in complex formulations as well as protein-material interactions. Reza then joined Sanofi’s Global Biologic Drug Product Development team and headed a formulation and process development laboratory in the Company’s R&D hub in Frankfurt, Germany. He developed early formulations and drug product manufacturing processes for several molecules in various modalities, including antibodies and nanobodies.

Prof. Dr. Christian Schöneich is the Takeru Higuchi Distinguished Professor for Bioanalytical Chemistry and Chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at The University of Kansas. Between 1987 and 1991, he worked in the Department of Radiation Chemistry at the Hahn-Meitner Institute in Berlin, Germany.

He joined the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at The University of Kansas as a post-doctoral fellow in 1991 and as a faculty member in 1992; in 2004, he was a visiting professor at the ETH Zürich, Switzerland. His research focuses on oxidation reactions of peptides, proteins, and surfactants. Concerning peptides and proteins, he studies oxidation reactions in vivo and in vitro and their potential consequences for developing stable protein pharmaceuticals, biological aging, and age-related pathologies. He has published over 290 papers on peptide and protein oxidation reactions.

Prof. Dr. Hristo Svilenov is an expert in biotherapeutics’ design, formulation development and analytical characterization. He is Professor of Biopharmaceutical Technology at the Technical University Munich (TUM).

Previously, Prof. Svilenov was an associate professor of biopharmaceutical manufacturing technology and formulation at Ghent University and spent two years as a postdoctoral scientist at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) where he worked at the newly established Centre for Functional Protein Assemblies (CPA). In 2019, he successfully defended his PhD thesis with “summa cum laude” as a Maria Skłodowska-Curie fellow at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in the group of Prof. Dr. Gerhard Winter. Previously, he worked as a research scientist in a biotech company and as a teaching assistant at the Medical University of Sofia, Bulgaria.

Prof. Dr. Susumu Uchiyama is a biophysical chemist with over 25 years of experience. Since 2017, he has been a professor of biotechnology at the Osaka University in Japan. He focuses on studying solution biophysics of proteins, protein complexes and protein-nucleic acids complexes using various methods, including analytical ultracentrifugation, mass spectrometry (mainly native MS and HDX-MS) and calorimetry. Prof. Uchiyama also remodeled analytical instruments, such as laser optics for the Beckman Model-E analytical ultracentrifuge and digital data acquisition system for the DASM-4 calorimeter. He has also participated in the development of several instrument prototypes.

In 2005, Prof. Uchiyama stayed for one year at Prof. Carol Robinson’s laboratory at Cambridge University, where he focused on native mass spectrometry. He launched U-Medico Inc. in 2006 and has provided analytical services for pharmaceutical companies since 2008. His research interest includes an energetic understanding of immune-related proteins and formulation development of therapeutic proteins and gene therapy products. His research scope also consists of a container closure system for biopharmaceuticals with better quality and more safety. In recent years, Prof. Uchiyama has led a national project in Japan to develop characterization and quality control of virus vectors for gene therapy. He has published over 250 peer-reviewed papers and reviews and edited a book of Analytical Ultracentrifugation from Springer. He serves on the Editorial Advisory Boards for the Journal of Biochemistry and Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Prof. Wagner is a professor of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) and the Center of Nanoscience in Munich, Germany. Previously (1991-2001), he was the Director Cancer Vaccines & Gene Therapy at Boehringer Ingelheim in Vienna, Austria, where he supervised the first-in-world polymer-based human gene therapy trial in 1994.

Prof. Wagner is an Academician of the European Academy of Sciences, a Controlled Release Society (CRS) College of Fellows member, a German Society for Gene Therapy board member, and the Journal of Gene Medicine Editor-in-Chief. He has authored more than 475 publications with almost 45,000 citations. His current academic research projects focus on the targeted delivery of nucleic acids (including mRNA) and protein therapeutics.

Prof. Dr. Gerhard Winter is an expert in formulation development and the delivery of biopharmaceutical drugs and colloidal drug carriers, parenteral process technologies, and lyophilization. He has been a professor of Pharmaceutical Technology and Biopharmaceutics at LMU Munich since 1999 and was one of the co-founders of Coriolis in 2008.

Besides his long academic career, Prof. Dr. Gerhard Winter has collected more than 12 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry while working for Merck, Boehringer Mannheim and Roche. Amongst many achievements, he was the lead pharmaceutical scientist developing the market formulations for erythropoietin, ibandronate and reteplase. His responsibilities span from preformulation and interface management with protein drug substance development and production to formulation development, stability studies, upscaling and CMC dossier preparation, and technology assessment for drug delivery systems. He also led a large-scale aseptic pilot plant to supply worldwide clinical studies with lyophilizates and sterile solutions. Prof. Dr. Gerhard has published over 230 research papers, patents and book chapters. More than 60 Ph.D. students have finished their thesis under his supervision, most of whom hold positions in the pharma and biotech industry. Since 2006, he has been a co-organizer of the bi-annual conference on freeze drying of pharmaceuticals in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Breckenridge.