Melya Hughes Crameri holds over 25 years’ executive and strategic experience in the life science industry. She has founded and served as CEO, CXO, at board level and as strategic advisor for companies in Europe as well as in the United States (Evolva SA, Genetic Chemistry Inc., Amunix Inc., KDx Inc.). She is experienced in corporate governance, corporate strategy, leadership, business development, fundraising and intellectual property, with a track record of successful fundraising and partnerships/collaborations with pharma, biotech, Government and academic organizations. She has secured more than USD 80M in government contracts, over $100M in financing, participated in listings on the Swiss stock exchange and been responsible for a number of high-value partnering deals.
Earlier in her career, Melya practiced patent law at Cooley LLP and at Geron Corporation, both in the USA. Following this, she was Head of Licensing and Patents at FMI (Novartis Corporate Research) in Basel, Switzerland. Prior to that, she held research scientist positions at IRBM (Merck, Sharp & Dohme/Sigma Tau) and with the FMI (Ciba Geigy AG).
Melya received her BSc (Hons.) in Biochemistry from Cardiff University, United Kingdom, and a PhD in Biochemistry from University of Basel, Switzerland. She is registered to practice patent law before the US Patent and Trademark Office and is a European Patent Attorney. She is a Member of the Institute of Directors (mIoD) and has earned her IoD Certificate in Corporate Direction (Governance, Finance, Strategy, Leadership).