Belén Garijo
Belén Garijo is
a member of the Executive Board of Merck and CEO of Healthcare. She started her career as a practicing physician at La Paz hospital (Madrid) before moving to the pharmaceutical industry. She held several local and global executive positions, both in R&D and commercial, at various companies at the forefront of the Healthcare sector. Then Belén served as the Senior Vice President of Global Operations Europe at Sanofi-Aventis and Global Integration Leader of Genzyme after its acquisition by Sanofi. In 2011, she joined Merck as Chief Operating Officer of the Biopharma business, becoming President and CEO of Healthcare in 2015. Under her leadership, Healthcare at Merck has become a key player in the area of oncology, immunology and immuno-oncology, after the profound repositioning of the portfolio, the reorganization of R&D and the transformation of the commercial model. She has forged two major global alliances to further contribute to the portfolio’s maximization and has focused on globalization by expanding the business to growth markets as Japan and the U.S.
Manuel Pérez
Manuel Pérez-Alonso 
graduated in Biology and obtained a PhD in Molecular Genetics, after a stay at the Molecular Genetics Laboratory of the University of Lund (Sweden). He is Professor of Genetics at the University of Valencia, where he founded the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics of Development. They have developed 4 biotechnological patents that have been transferred to the biopharmaceutical industry. He has been Roche’s scientific advisor in the area of DNA sequencing. In 1998, he created his first biotechnology company and he is a founding partner of other 8, almost all located at the University of Valencia. It stands out its collaboration with the multinational Life Technologies in the development of genome ultrasequencing applications through SOLiD technology. Currently, his research focuses on the development of tools for the genomic diagnosis of hereditary diseases as well as research on the pathophysiological mechanisms of rare genetic diseases. Manuel is the President of the Spanish Association of Scientific Entrepreneurs created in 2012 and the founder and director of the Revista de Genética Médica