Board of Directors

Prof. Owe Bicker MD PhD

Prof. Owe Bicker is a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Adventism Foundation, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of DadeBehring Inc., and a Member of the Board of the University of Marburg. He is also Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Future Capital AG, Frankfurt.

He was previously a board member of the Behringwerke AG, a board member of HoechstMarionRoussel AG and a board member of Boehringer Mannheim GmbH. He is a qualified physician, holds doctorates in medicine and chemistry and is a Professor at the University of Heidelberg Medical School.

Prof. Dr. Gerd Binnig

Prof. Dr. Gerd Binnig, along with his colleague, Heinrich Rohrer, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986 for his work in scanning tunneling microscopy. Mr. Binnig and Mr. Rohrer were recognized for developing the powerful microscopy technique, which can form an image of individual atoms on a metal or semiconductor surface by scanning the tip of a needle over the surface at a height of only a few atomic diameters.

Born in Frankfurt, Germany, Mr. Binnig was educated at J.W. Goethe University in Frankfurt, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1973 and his doctorate in 1978. That year he joined a physics research group at IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory. Mr. Binnig was assigned to IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., from 1985 to 1986, and was a visiting professor at nearby Stanford University from 1987 to 1988. Mr. Binnig is a permanent consultant for Definiens since 1994.


Christian Claussen

Christian Claussen joined TVM in June 1998. Focusing on communications and internet enabling technology, he leads or co-leads TVM's investments as a director of Arteris S.A., Aventeon Inc., Coreoptics Inc., Definiens AG, Infitel International NV, and Telesnap AG, and as case manager for Time AG (acquired by Genesys S.A.) and Tantau Inc. (acquired by 724 Solutions).

Prior to joining TVM, Mr. Claussen was responsible for strategic business development and product line management in optical transmission networks, a $1.5billion business unit part of Siemens' Public Networking Group. Before going into venture capital, he spent more than eight years gathering operational experience in the international telecommunications industry including a one-year sales assignment in the Philippines back in 1992. Mr. Claussen holds a European MSc. degree in Communications Engineering from the Technical University of Karlsruhe [D], the University of Essex [GB] and the Ecole Superieure en Electronique et Electrotechnique in Paris.


Roland Dennert

Roland Dennert was part of the team that successfully opened 3i Group's office in Munich where he was involved in several IPOs for the firm. He then joined Swiss venture firm, Atila Ventures, as a Director and was responsible for their Software, Microelectronics and Data Communications investments in Europe and the United States. Subsequently, he joined Cipio Partners.

Prior to his career in venture capital, Mr. Dennert was a management consultant with Roland Berger & Partner in Munich and with The Boston Consulting Group in Paris. He started his career as an engineer with Hitachi Ltd. in Japan. Mr. Dennert holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a Master of Electrical Engineering from ETH Lausanne, Switzerland.


Werner Dreesbach

Until founding Cipio Partners in 2003, Werner Dreesbach was a Senior Principal of Atlas Venture, Boston/London, a large early-stage investment firm serving the Information Technology, Communications and Life Sciences industries with funds of $2.4bn. He was a member of Atlas Venture's Global Management and Investment Committees responsible for evaluating and approving all investments made by the partnership. In his day-to-day responsibility, he served as lead partner for numerous investments, especially in the German-speaking countries.

Prior to Atlas, Mr. Dreesbach was Vice President Strategic Development for NASDAQ-listed Viasoft Corporation, a developer of software tools. In 1996, he sold his own company, R&O Software-Technik GmbH, one of Europe's largest system software vendors, to Viasoft. Prior to co-founding R&O in 1984, he served as a senior consultant with Diebold & Partner, one of Germany's leading management consultancies in IT strategy and management, now part of Deutsche Telekom. Mr. Dreesbach holds a BA degree in Computer Science with a minor in Psychology from Bonn University.


Stefan Fischer

Stefan Fischer, General Partner, Corporate Finance TVM, works closely together with the Life Science and Information Technology Team on all aspects of corporate finance involving the TVM portfolio companies. His responsibilities include structuring and coordinating the investment process from a finance, tax and legal perspective, performing financial due diligence and valuation analysis, negotiating term sheets and legal documents, monitoring of investments as well as providing operational support to TVM portfolio companies.

Mr. Fischer joined TVM in September 2000 after three years as a consultant in the corporate finance department of KPMG Deutsche Treuhand-Gesellschaft. He has gained extensive experience in the valuation of enterprises, financial due diligence, corporate restructuring and auditing through national and international projects. Mr. Fischer earned his academic degree in business administration at the University of Passau. His focus was Corporate Finance, Banking and IT, and he took courses in Corporate Finance and Business Communication at the Helsinki School of Economics.