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Tech x Bio Night: Different DNA, Same Ambition.
Powered by Wintercircus x VIB, supported by Biovia, Provincie Oost-Vlaanderen & Voka
Two Ghent giants are about to meet. At last. 💥
Ghent has two ecosystems of world-class calibre: tech and biotech. But for the most part, they live next to each other, not with each other. A tech founder thinks in sprints and quarters. A biotech entrepreneur thinks in clinical phases and decades. Different clocks, different languages. Same hunger to build what doesn't exist yet.
On 27 October, VIB and Wintercircus bring 400 professionals from both worlds together for one evening.
The night opens with Karen Massey (CEO of argenx) and Roeland Delrue (co-founder of Aikido Security): two reference points in their ecosystems, on growth. How do you scale with software, and how do you scale with a medicine? The audience votes live, so the assumptions are on the table right from the start.
From there: Matthew Foy (Avante Biocapital) and international tech investor Michelangelo Valtancoli on what it takes to fund a biotech company versus a tech company, and Riccardo Sabatini and Jeroen Van Hautte – two of the sharpest minds in AI – on how they put new tech to work to accelerate growth in their own fields.
We close under the Wintercircus roof, with a walking dinner built to keep both crowds mixing rather than splitting off into their own corners.
Maybe the tech founder leaves with a bit more patience. Maybe the biotech researcher leaves moving a bit faster. Either way: this is where that conversation starts.
* This event will be held in English.
Timetable
- 18u00: Doors open & finger food
- 19u00: Opening
- Roeland Delrue (Aikido) x Karen Massey (Argenx)
- 19u30: European growth mindset & funding ride
- Roeland Delrue (Aikido) x Michelangelo Valtancoli (Chaotica) x Karen Massey (Argenx) x Matthew Foy (Avante Biocapital)
- 20u15: AI as superbooster of your company
- Jeroen Van Hautte (TechWolf) x Riccardo Sabatini (Orionis Biosciences)
- 21u00: Closing word
- 21u:30: Networking & light walking dinner
Speakers
ROELAND DELRUE
Roeland Delrue is co-founder and COO of Aikido Security, the Ghent-based cybersecurity company that grew into a unicorn in just over three years. Before Aikido, he worked at Showpad, where he spent several years in San Francisco helping build out the US expansion, and at HR tech company Officient. Today he stays closely involved in both Aikido's commercial and product strategy, with the ambition of making software security increasingly autonomous.
KAREN MASSEY
Karen Massey has served as Chief Executive Officer of argenx, a global immunology company, since May 2026, after previously serving as Chief Operating Officer from March 2023 to April 2026. With more than twenty years in the biopharmaceutical industry, she spent nine years at Genentech (Roche Group) as Senior Vice President of Product Development and Global Clinical Operations, and held commercial roles at Pfizer and Bain & Company. Massey holds a Bachelor of Economics from the University of Sydney and an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business.
MICHELANGELO VALTANCOLI
Michelangelo Valtancoli is founder and solo GP of Chaotica, a $7.5M San Francisco venture fund leading inception rounds for young, undiscovered talent worldwide, backed by Sequoia and dozens of other seed and Series A funds. He became a Principal at Stride.VC at just 23, under the mentorship of Fred Destin. With Chaotica, he's led inception rounds for companies including Minerva Humanoids and Omos Biosciences, and is also an angel investor in more than 10 companies.
MATTHEW FOY
Matthew Foy has been CEO and Managing Partner of Avante Biocapital since June 2024, bringing over a decade of transatlantic biotech experience, including 15 years at SR One Capital Management, the venture firm spun out of GSK in 2020. He serves as Investor Director at Econic Biosciences and Xap Therapeutics, and sits on the boards of Fore Biotherapeutics and Pulmocide. Alongside his investment work, he's been a consultant and seed investor at PRESS London since 2015, and a patron of emerging artists since 2018.
JEROEN VAN HAUTTE
Jeroen Van Hautte is co-founder and CTO of TechWolf, the leading data layer for enterprise workforce transformation. Using AI, TechWolf combines skills, work and market intelligence to help companies like HSBC, GSK and PayPal make workforce decisions based on what people can actually do. Jeroen holds an MPhil in Advanced Computer Science from Cambridge, where his thesis on language models became the foundation for TechWolf's Skill Engine. He was named a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer in 2022 and made the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list in 2023.
RICCARDO SABATINI
Riccardo Sabatini is a scientist and entrepreneur specializing in numerical modeling of complex systems, with expertise spanning materials and molecular design, computational genomics and predictive health. He co-founded the Refugees Action HUB at MIT, serves as an investment advisor at ENI Next, and co-founded the Quantum ESPRESSO Foundation. A frequent speaker at TED and WEF, he previously chaired the I7 Team at G7 on artificial intelligence. He holds a PhD from SISSA and was a lead research scientist at Human Longevity.
Ticket price
Ticket price: €75 excl. VAT.
Students get 50% off upon presentation of a valid student ID
Coming with a group? Get 5% off when purchasing 5+ tickets, or 10% off when purchasing 10+ tickets. The discount is automatically applied at checkout, no code needed!
About VIB
VIB (Flemish Institute for Biotechnology) is a leading international research institute that translates fundamental biological research into applications in healthcare, agriculture and industry. With more than 2,500 researchers spread across five Flemish universities and a strong track record in launching biotech spin-offs, VIB is not only a key player in Belgium but also within the European life sciences ecosystem.
