Marcelo C. Ribeiro is now Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at River BioMedics. Marcelo holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry form Lisbon University, Portugal and a Masters in Drug Innovation from Utrecht University. He performed his PhD research in the Leiden University Medical Center developing hiPSC derived cardiomyocyte cardiac disease models and studying hiPSC derived cardiomyocyte maturation. Marcelo was involved in the Crack IT challenge, a consortium between research groups and the large pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) funded by NC3R, for the development of hiPSC 2D platform for animal replacement in drug development. After that Marcelo held a Postdoc position at the department of Applied Stem Cell Technologies at the University of Twente. Overall, Marcelo has 10 years of experience in the cardiovascular and human stem cell field evidenced by 17 peer-reviewed scientific publications. As, an entrepreneur Marcelo has attended several business courses, including Biobusiness Summer School (hyphen’s projects), Business orientation week at Nyenrode Business University and the Early Business Development course at the University of Twente. In 2018, he headed the River BioMedics team during their participation in the Health~Holland Venture Challenge. Marcelo has an active entrepreneurial spirit and strong will to translate his research into a commercial product for societal valorisation.