Starthub mentor
Ansa Baykus-Wasim has big ambition to support, stimulate and create innovative (R&D) projects in the Life Sciences and Agri-Food sector, with stakeholders from academia and industry. She has been involved in a diverse range of research projects throughout her career, thus acquiring an extensive hands-on knowledge of the field of Life Sciences.
“After obtaining my PhD, I worked at the grant consultancy agency PNO Consultants and provided innovation management and grants advisory services to start-ups, multinationals, research institutes, individual scientists and other stakeholders in the LSH and Agri-Food sector. Subsequently, at NWO (the national funding organisation), I was responsible for the program management of various funding programmes such as the Talent Scheme (Veni), National Science Agenda and the public-private programmes GROEN III and Fotosynthese.
In addition, I co-organised the Life Science with Industry workshop in 2018 and 2019. Currently, I am a business development manager at Invest-NL and supporting start-ups to make the transition to scale-up phase in the agri-food sector.”
Program management
Project development
Grant writing and application
Public funding (NWO, H2020, INTERREG) and investments
Innovation strategies
Business models
Agri-food, life sciences, science communication
Dissemination, exploitation and valorisation
2020 - Present Accelerating Sustainable and Innovative Business Development, Invest-NL
2018 - 2020 Science policy officer / Program manager Life Sciences, NWO
2014 - 2018 Consultant Grants and Innovation Life Sciences and Health, PNO
2010 - 2014 Project Manager of Science Outreach Project ‘The Flight Artists’, WUR
2009 - 2013 PhD Molecular & Developmental Biology, WUR & Hubrecht Institute
2007 - 2008 Research Assistant, Experimental Zoology group, WUR
1999 - 2006 BSc and MSc Molecular Animal Biology, WUR