From Discovery to Delivery – Meet our Senior Team

Oliver Hennig, Ph.D., is Senior Vice President Operations at BioNTech SE and Managing Director of Biontech Manufacturing GmbH. In these positions, he is responsible for the BioNTech manufacturing network: from the production of individualized mRNA-based cancer therapies to the production of the COVID-19 vaccine. He was also responsible for the successful scale-up of the production to a commercial capacity during “Project Lightspeed,” the company’s successful effort to develop and distribute an mRNA-based vaccine against COVID-19. Oliver joined BioNTech in 2015 and since then has continued to expand the manufacturing and supply chain network to deliver the appropriate products to markets and clinical trials.

Until 2015, Oliver worked at Siemens in a diverse range of positions. After spending almost ten years in R&D, he built a global engineering team for large-scale photovoltaic systems. In the last two years at Siemens, Oliver has built and led a lifecycle management team for onshore wind turbines.

Oliver holds a PhD from the University of the German Armed Forces in Munich and a Master of Science from the University of Arizona in Optical Sciences.

Prof. Katalin Karikó, Ph.D., was Senior Vice President RNA Protein Replacement Therapies at BioNTech SE since 2013. Since 2022, she has been an external consultant at BioNTech. Katalin is a professor at University of Szeged where she obtained her Ph.D., and adjunct professor at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, where she worked for 24 years. During her decades-long research, she has been focusing on RNA-mediated mechanisms with the ultimate goal of developing in vitro-transcribed mRNA for protein therapy. She investigated RNA-mediated immune activation and co-discovered that nucleoside modifications suppress immunogenicity of RNA, which widened the therapeutic potentials of mRNA.

For her achievements she received many prestigious awards, most notably the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the Japan Prize, Paul Ehrlich Award, the Gairdner Award, the Kovalenko Medal, the Breakthrough prize and the Lasker Award. 

Holger Kissel, Ph.D., serves as Senior Vice President Scientific Relations & Liaison at BioNTech. Being a part of the Company since 2013, he assumed this role in 2023. With an extensive background in business development and licensing, he is dedicated to advancing global health initiatives and fostering public-private partnerships.

In his previous roles as Vice President Business Alliances and Director Business Development at BioNTech, Holger played a pivotal role in establishing the Company’s extensive corporate and scientific network, resulting in numerous in- and out-licensing deals, including collaborations with Genentech and Pfizer. The latter resulted in the joint development of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. Additionally, Holger was responsible for managing key collaborations with pharmaceutical and biotech companies as well as academic partners.

Prior to joining BioNTech, Holger served as the Head of Oncology Program as part of the Global Business Development team at Taconic Biosciences GmbH, where he led strategic initiatives to position the company as a leading contract research organization in pre-clinical cancer research.

Holger holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Hamburg. Conducting research at the Sloan Kettering Institute in New York during his Ph.D. and working as a postdoctoral researcher at Rockefeller University in New York, he brings a wealth of scientific expertise to his role.

Siggi Kloos is Senior Vice President R&D Digital, Data & Informatics at BioNTech SE. In this capacity, he oversees the vision, strategy and deployment of Clinical Development R&D-Digital to support BioNTech with current and future oriented high-end Informatics technologies and advanced data analytics to further build patient-centric and tangible data-driven digital health strategies. Siggi joined BioNTech in October 2021. Prior, he worked for Merck KGaA, where he served as Global Head of R&D-IT. He also held leadership positions with a focus on R&D data and technology platforms at Roche / Genentech and Millenium (part of Takeda). Siggi studied human medicine in Bonn, Germany and worked as a research fellow in experimental anesthesiology, before relocating to the U.S. and joining the biopharmaceutical industry in Silicon Valley.

Sebastian Kreiter, M.D., is heading preclinical R&D work at BioNTech since the company’s foundation. He acts as Senior Vice President Immunotherapy & Preclinical Research. His team is responsible for the discovery and preclinical development of RNA-based therapeutic platforms, such as vaccines, antibodies and cytokines. His early efforts were devoted on preclinical development of in-vitro transcribed mRNA cancer vaccination, which is currently under clinical testing. He took part in the pioneering development of personalized cancer vaccinations. Jointly with Ugur Sahin, Sebastian and his team worked out the preclinical scientific and technical proof of concept for BioNTech’s mRNA-based mutanome vaccine.

Besides his work within R&D, Sebastian has been designated by the Board, together with Felicitas Müller, to drive BioNTech’s “Culture Campus”, a project that fosters the company’s unique corporate culture in times of rapid evolution. The “Culture Campus” was created to bring together employees from a wide range of disciplines to work together to develop the culture based on the founding team’s vision.

Further to his role, Sebastian serves as board member for the Association for Cancer Immunotherapy (“CIMT”) and is also active at the TRON research institute. He has co-authored more than 50 publications in peer-reviewed journals including Nature and Science. Sebastian graduated in medicine from Johannes Gutenberg-University in Mainz and is a board-certified internist.

Andreas Kuhn, Ph.D., is Senior Vice President RNA Biochemistry & Manufacturing. He joined BioNTech shortly after its founding in 2008. Andreas has worked with RNA for almost thirty years. This started with his diploma and PhD theses on the structure and function of small non-coding RNAs using biochemical and molecular biology methods. In his post-doctoral work, Andreas studied RNA-protein interactions in the spliceosome in yeast and later worked on small molecules to affect pre-mRNA splicing. His work on mRNA-based immunotherapies began in 2007 in the academic group of Ugur Sahin at the University Clinic Mainz. In his role at BioNTech, the main focus is expanding proprietary technologies to increase the efficacy of mRNA-based therapies and to develop and optimize GMP-compatible manufacturing processes and analytical methods for RNA. The RNA platform established by Andreas and his team allowed to start the clinical development of BioNTech’s mRNA-based therapeutics and was seminal for the development of the mRNA-based Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. He has co-authored numerous publications and patents ranging from basic research on RNA to its application as a therapeutic agent and vaccine.

Felicitas Müller, Ph.D., is Senior Vice President Scientific Alliance and joined BioNTech in 2012. She has held a number of scientific and leadership roles within the company since joining Ugur Sahin’s team more than 10 years ago. Initially, Felicitas’ focus was on the development of BioNTech’s lead product candidate for individual cancer treatments, based on the company’s mRNA technology platform. Currently, she is leading the development of BioNTech’s individualized vaccines against cancer to ensure the continued successful translation from the preclinical stage into clinical testing. Together with her cross-functional team, Felicitas is responsible for advancing mRNA-based drug product candidates and eventually introducing them on the market to make them accessible to patients in need. Besides her projects within the oncology area, Felicitas has been designated by the Board, together with Sebastian Kreiter, to drive BioNTech’s “Culture Campus”, a project that fosters the company’s unique corporate culture in times of rapid evolution. The “Culture Campus” was created to bring together employees from a wide range of disciplines to work together to develop the culture based on the founding team’s vision.

Christian Miculka, Ph.D., serves as Senior Vice President Portfolio Execution at BioNTech SE. Having joined the company in 2020, he oversees a team of program managers which connect functions and people across the company into program teams for effective and efficient cross-functional work in our R&D programs. Christian and his team, among other things, helped build efficient interaction and collaboration with the partners involved in “Project Lightspeed,” ensuring a rapid flow of information and program execution.

Christian has 25 years of experience in the life science industry. He joined BioNTech from Sanofi, where he headed the Program Office and the Office of the President Global R&D in Paris following commercial strategy roles. Prior to that, he held R&D leadership roles at Merial in Atlanta, and Intervet/Schering-Plough in Germany.

Christian holds a doctorate in Organic Chemistry from the Technical University Vienna, and executive education certificates from London Business School, Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, INSEAD, and Harvard Business School.

Frank van den Ouweland, M.D., Ph.D., joined BioNTech in 2022 as a Senior Vice President for Medical Safety and Pharmacovigilance (MSPv). MSPv is responsible for optimizing patient safety by monitoring and analyzing potential safety signals. Furthermore, MSPv supports the clinical development process by leading the structured benefit-risk process and assures compliance with the applicable regulations concerning the reporting of adverse events.

Frank held various senior positions in the pharmaceutical industry: He started his career in pharmaceutical medicine as Director Clinical Development at Procter & Gamble in the UK, and later worked for Johnson & Johnson in various positions in clinical development, benefit risk management and safety alliance management in the U.S., Switzerland, and the UK. Frank also served as President of the Swiss Association of Pharmaceutical Professionals. Frank is specialist in Internal Medicine, holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Pharmacology at Radboud University in Nijmegen and worked as a senior research fellow at the department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Rotterdam University.

Zach Taylor serves as Senior Vice President Corporate Development and Strategy at BioNTech. With more than 25 years of experience in the biotech, pharmaceutical and medical technology industries, he is responsible for the development and execution of strategic transactions and supporting the corporate strategy.

Zach joined BioNTech in 2020 and has since been contributing to transforming the company to a fully integrated, global immunotherapy powerhouse. For example, his team played a pivotal role in the acquisition of InstaDeep, helping BioNTech in its aim to become a leader in implementing AI technology for drug discovery, development, and commercialization.

As a founding employee of Neon Therapeutics, Zach helped create the company’s business plan that led to a $55 million Series A funding. He was a key contributor to Neon's IPO at NASDAQ and the eventual sale of the company to BioNTech. Prior to joining Neon, he held various roles in business development, strategy, drug development, and commercial at companies such as Millennium Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Takeda), Philips Research, and Parke-Davis Warner Lambert (acquired by Pfizer).

Zach holds a Bachelor of Science in engineering physics from Cornell University and earned his MBA from the Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University.

William Warr, Ph.D., is Senior Vice President for Global Health Strategy. In this capacity, he leads the development and implementation of partnerships between BioNTech, governments, health systems, universities, and NGOs across the world. William served for three years as a health adviser in the government of the United Kingdom (UK), including during the global COVID-19 pandemic. He was closely involved in many aspects of the UK's response, such as clinical trials, testing, and the roll-out of vaccines. He also contributed to the design and implementation of the UK Government's broader public health policies.

Prior to this role, he wrote the 2017 UK’s Life Sciences Industrial Strategy for the physician Prof. Sir John Bell, with a focus on genomics, artificial intelligence, and early disease detection. This involved designing and creating one of the UK’s largest cohort studies at that time titled "Our Future Health", aiming to recruit 5 million people to improve early detection and prevention of disease. William has a Ph.D. from Oxford University in Public Health and a master’s degree from Cambridge University in Public Policy. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London, and an Honorary Senior Fellow at the University of Oxford. In his free time, he enjoys sport, including rowing. He rowed in the Boat Race for both Oxford and Cambridge, winning it with Oxford, and is a GB rowing gold medalist.