Our People

Brian Walters assumed the role of President & CEO of Genovac Antibody Discovery after leading a management-led buyout of Aldevron’s Antibody Discovery Business Unit. Most recently, Brian was serving as President of Aldevron’s Antibody Discovery Business Unit before leading the establishment of Genovac. Brian graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi with a Master of Science in Economic Development and received a Bachelor of Science from the University of North Dakota in Geography and Mathematics.

Prior to joining Genovac, Pete was a principal scientist for downstream process development at Catalent, Madison, Wis. Before that he was a proposal manager at Patheon, a division of Thermos Fisher Scientific, in Princeton, N.J., and the senior manager of technical operations in the Madison, Wis., Protein Division of Fargo-based Aldevron. Pete holds a Bachelor of Arts in chemistry from St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minn., and a doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In her current role as Manager of Sales and Client Development, Bree actively shares innovative Genovac technologies and on boards new clients. Prior to her time at Genovac, she worked in agriculture biotechnology, state and international regulatory science and U.S. science policy. She received her Master of Biotechnology degree from Texas A&M University and her Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology from St. Catherine University.

As one of the first scientific employees of Genovac, Hubertus Schleer was instrumental in establishing and optimizing processes and methods for antibody development using genetic immunization, highly efficient cell fusion technologies and cell-based screening methods. After several years as Head of Antibody Production at Aldevron, he now serves Genovac in the role of Vice President of Science and Operations. Hubertus holds a Master of Science in Cell Biology and Immunology from the Albert-Ludwigs-University, Freiburg, Germany. He received his PhD from the Medical Faculty Carl Gustav Carus of the Technical University of Dresden, working in the field of cancer immunology and molecular biology.

At Genovac, Iwona leads the single B-cell antibody discovery technology group where she is responsible for the development of processes on and around Berkeley Lights’ Beacon platform for the discovery of antibodies against challenging targets. Iwona earned her PhD from the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Germany and has ten years of experience in immunobiology. Her work in the field of T cells and infectious diseases resulted in several publications in peer-reviewed journals.

Christoph Burger took the role as Department Head Hybridoma after working for Genovac and Aldevron as computer specialist and laboratory technician since 2000. Before (1990-1993) Christoph received his education as a laboratory technician in the Group of Dr. Fritz Grunert in Freiburg, one of the three founders of Genovac. From 1995 to 1998 he studied computer science at the Albert Ludwigs University in Freiburg but stopped after receiving his intermediate diploma.

Beril joined the newly founded company Genovac as a project analyst and she accompanied the company’s transition to Aldevron-Freiburg and its re-organization to today´s Genovac, gaining over 20 years of experience in the assessment and accomplishment of DNA immunization projects. This work led her to her current role as the head of the Molecular Immunology department at Genovac where she is responsible for the analyses of incoming project requests and the development of project strategies as well as overlooking the molecular biological work of the DNA immunization projects. After earning her diploma degree in Biology with the focus on Developmental Biology at the University of Freiburg, Beril completed her PhD followed by a post-doc position at the Institute of Immunology in Freiburg.

Steffen joined Genovac 2013 and is managing at present the antibody sequencing department. Steffen received his PhD at the Friedrich Miescher Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation in Basel, working in the field of molecular biology. He then was a postdoctoral fellow in the “Developmental and Molecular Immunology” group at the Department of Biomedicine of the University of Basel studying molecular mechanisms underlying early B cell development.

Before his employment at Genovac GmbH he was holding a deputy professorship in the cell biology department at the University of Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg, Germany. Andreas Weise joined Genovac GmbH in 2016 as a Project Manager. By time he took over more responsibilities in the Genovac Account Management and he now holds a position as Senior Account Manager. In this function he is the primary contact for many Genovac key accounts throughout the course of Antibody Discovery projects. Andreas holds a Ph.D. in molecular and cell biology and graduated at the Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Germany.

Alina is part of the account management team at Genovac in Freiburg. She obtained a PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Mainz as a scholarship student within the International PhD Programme. She graduated with distinction from Uni Konstanz with a Master of Science in Molecular Life Sciences.

Kourosh Gharun has joined Genovac in 2020 as an Account Manager acting as a primary contact throughout the course of Antibody Discovery projects. Kourosh holds a PhD in Immunology from the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg and a Master of Science in Virology from Imperial College London. Kourosh has conducted his postdoctoral research at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and has most recently hold a Lead Project Manager position in an industry leading virtual reality company for Pharma and Life Sciences, before joining Genovac.

Gabriel Zea joined Genovac in early 2020. Since then, he has been working closely with many clients and is now managing several projects in the company. He comes from Bogota, Colombia, where he studied pharmacy and worked in radiopharmaceutical production for cancer therapy. He then moved to Germany to complete his master’s degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences and work as a specialist in the healthcare IT sector before joining us.