Rik van Heijningen received his Bachelor degree in Biochemisty at Interstudie in Oss in 1987, and in 2002 he completed a Master in Business Administration (MBA) at the University of Birmingham, England. He worked for 3 years in cancer research at the Free university Hospital in Amsterdam, and 15 years in several commercial and management roles in international businesses including Dynal Biotech A/S and Advanced Research Technologies inc. (ART, Montreal, Canada). During the one and half years at ART, he was responsible for the European commercial and business development, to find and negotiate partnerships with key Opinion leaders and pharmaceutical companies, to provide revenue by selling the first generation fluorescence time-domain instruments to imaging labs and to establish an application- and instrument service network on the continent. Over the last 10 years he was active as executive and interim manager for several biotech and medical device companies, like Hycult Biotech and Phillips Medisize in The Netherlands. He joined this group as Business Development Manager in September of 2019.