Dr Erik Bogsch

Head of the Biotechnology R&D Division, Gedeon Richter 

Dr Erik Bogsch is the Head of the Biotechnology R&D Division at Gedeon Richter Plc. He is responsible for leading the R&D effort in the development of GR's biosimilar pipeline. Gedeon Richter Plc. is engaged in the development and manufacture of both bacterial cell fermentation based and mammalian cell fermentation based biosimilar products. GR has R&D, analytical & manufacturing capabilities in multiple locations in Hungary & Germany.

Dr Bogsch, a Hungarian national, has a Natural Sciences degree from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in cell biology from the University of Warwick. Following a brief postdoctoral academic research career, he worked in the food industry for many years in R&D, Quality & Manufacturing roles in the UK, Hungary & Germany. He joined Gedeon Richter Plc. in 2012, as commissioning lead for GR's biotechnology factory in Debrecen, Hungary, before moving into his current role.

Dr Piotr Lipiński

Global Quality Auditor, GMP, Sandoz

Piotr has over 12 years of experience in pharmaceutical companies. Currently he is a Global Quality Auditor in Sandoz. Before he worked in pharmaceutical manufacturing sites as Quality Assurance Specialist, Qualified Person and Quality Systems Manager.

The experience includes particularly quality systems implementation, self-inspections, trainings and auditing of materials, products suppliers and service providers. Piotr has detailed knowledge in scope of all GxP rules with special focus on Good Manufacturing Practice and Good Distribution Practice.

Piotr is a PhD Eng. in scope of Technology of Chemistry. Additionally, he completed post-graduate studies in scope of Industrial Chemistry at Medical University of Gdansk. He was participating as well in numerous courses related to GMP aspects in pharmaceutical industry.

Lenka Francišković

Head of Processes and Products Quality, Belupo Pharmaceuticals

Lenka is a Pharmaceutical Professional with a unique combination of pharmaceutical management experience and exceptional knowledge in the areas of the New Product Evaluation, Laboratory Operations, Pharmaceutical Analysis and Project Management. She has an extensive experience in pharmaceutical industry in Research and Development, Regulatory Affairs, Quality Assurance and Quality Control Environment as well as profound knowledge of TPB and FDA, EU and Croatian regulatory submission requirements.

Strong knowledge of GMP, GLP, ICH guidelines and Pharmacopoeia is inevitable part of Lenkas‘ professional skills. Lenka is currently Head of Processes and Products Quality for Belupo Pharmaceuticals Croatia. Prior to this work, she worked in several positions at Apotex Inc. Toronto, Ontario and Genpharm Inc. (now Milan Pharmaceuticals) in Etobicoke, Ontario. Lenka has published several publications, is member of Pharmaceutical Sciences Group, Toronto and Croatian Association for Quality.

Prof Dr Stane Srčič

Head of Pharmaceutical Technology Department, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Ljubljana

Dr Stane Srčič is a Professor for Pharmaceutical Technology at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His expertise is focused on solid oral dosage forms development and manufacturing and includes pre-formulation and  formulation, new manufacturing methods and customized equipment. After PhD he spent as post doc at the University of Regensburg, and was/is acting as a visiting Professor at the University of Liverpool, Szeged and Sarajevo. He served for more than 10 years as an expert from Slovenia on EMA (London) in the Committee for drugs in veterinary medicines and was responsible for quality parts of the dossiers.

He published more than 150 papers and is holder of  numerous patents and patents applications in EU, US, Russian Federation and India. He is strongly connected with domestic and foreign pharmaceutical industry and was leading a lot of different academia-industry projects.

His international collaboration on the education and research areas has been recognized and awarded with the honorary doctorate from the University of Szeged (Hungary).

Dr Sergii Sur

Director, Arterium

Dr Sur has over 25 years of work experience in the pharmaceutical market, including 14 years in management positions. He received his PhD degree in Pharmacy and published approximately 100 scientific publications. Between 1993 and 1998 he was the Head of State Laboratory for Quality Control of Medicines at the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the Ukrainian Academy of Medical Sciences in Kiev.

Between 1998 and 2005 he worked for the Ukraine Ministry of Health, firstly as the Director of Central Laboratory for Quality Control of Medicines and since 2000 as the Deputy Chief Inspector for Quality Control of Medicines. Since 2005, Dr Sur has been in his current position responsible for the development of a functional strategy in R&D; the development and introduction of R&D business processes and structure; and the organisation of research, development and registration of new products.

Additionally, Dr Sur is a member of the International Federation of Pharmacists (FIP) and since 1998 has been an adviser on International Pharmacopoeia and Pharmaceutical Preparations and since 2002 also on Traditional Medicines for the WHO which is headquartered in Geneva.

Violeta Dinić Milisavljević

Head of the Production Department, Alkaloid D.O.O.

Violeta has been working in the generic pharmaceutical industry for 16 years. She started her career as an R&D researcher, working on the solid dosage formulation and production process development, technology transfer and process validation for seven years. Currently, she is the Head of the Production Department of the production plant of Alkaloid AD in Serbia.

Violeta graduated from Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje - Faculty of Pharmacy (bachelor degree and specialisation on Pharmaceutical technology) and University of Belgrade - Faculty of Pharmacy (specialisation for QP). She is skilled in production planning, GMP, validation and regulatory issues.

István Király

Site Director, EGIS Pharmaceuticals

István Király graduated from the Technical University in Budapest as a mechanical engineer. During his professional career he has filled several technical- and production-related management positions in different industries at large international companies such as General Electric, DANONE, Alcoa and GlaxoSmithKline.

These challenges allowed him to be involved in the implementation and operation of different management and quality systems such as ISO, HACCP, GMP, Toyota Production System, Six Sigma and Lean Sigma.

In 2006 he joined  GSK Vaccines and started his career in Gödöllő Manufacturing site. He held various senior management positions until he was appointed as Managing director of the site in 2011. In 2015 he was nominated to VP, Head of Operations of the legacy Novartis Vaccines sites, overseeing the industrial operations of those sites and also managing the integration of those newly acquired manufacturing units into GSK Vaccines industrial network. In 2016 he was promoted to VP, Site Director Siena & Rosia Operations, Italy at GSK Vaccines.

In 2018 István returned to Hungary, and joined HUMAN BioPlazma (part of Kedrion Group) as Site Director, were he was accountable for the entire operations of the Hungarian Subsidiary of Kedrion Biopharma.

Since 2022 István is the Site Director at Egis Pharmaceutical responsible for the Körmend site.

Dr Devendra Ridhurkar

Expert Scientist -Modified Release Formulations, NeuraxPharm

Dr. Devendra Ridhurkar works as an Expert Scientist (Modified Release Formulations) at Neurax Pharm, Barcelona, Spain. In his capacity he is responsible for development of a value added, complex and modified release generic formulations for highly regulated market. He was associated with various reputed pharmaceutical companies like Egis Pharmaceuticals, Budapest, Hungary, Dr.Reddys Laboratories Hyderabad, IPCA Laboratories, Alkem Laboratories and Macleods Pharmaceuticals Mumbai, India. He has over 12 years of experience in formulation and development of complex, modified release and various generics (ANDA), 505(b)(2) products for  the global market using  different NDDS approaches and various platform technologies which includes hot melt extrusion (HME), gastroretentive drug delivery systems, nanotechnology and cyclodextrin complexation to name a few. He also worked on development of solid oral generic formulations for highly potent drugs (oncology). He is an expert in materializing the design of experiments (DOE); quality by design (QbD).He obtained his M.Pharm and Ph.D. degree in Pharmaceutics from Indian Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India.

He is a member of editorial board for various pharmaceutical Journals and has earned to his credit over 8 peer-reviewed papers in reputed international and national journals and 5 patents to his credit. He has been associated with various pharmaceutical bodies in India and abroad namely Indian Pharmaceutical Graduate Association (IPGA) and American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS). He has attended and delivered seminars and presentations at various national and international conferences.

Dr Aljoša Maglica

Product Steward Senior, Lek, Sandoz

Aljoša Maglica received his B. S. degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Ljubljana and earned his Ph.D. in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology from Jožef Stefan International Postgraduate School in Ljubljana.  Aljoša has more than 5 years of experience in the Nanoscience and Nanotechnology according to research projects and scientific improvements to the production scale.

At the beginning of 2011 he started his work in the sterile production - Lek Pharmaceuticals. As a Product Steward Senior he is responsible for regular production support, transfer of new product to the production and quality of parenteral drug products. In addition, his is also covering the lyophilization process.

Dr András Ballagi

CTO, Diagon

Dr Ballagi moved to Sweden shortly after completing his degree in Bioengineering. There he worked in the field of the diagnosis and molecular evolution of veterinary viruses at the Swedish Veterinary Institute. He received his PhD for his research on application of PCR for virus detection and analysis of viral outbreaks. Later he moved on to fermentation technology of recombinant microorganisms at the University of Uppsala. After almost 20 years in Sweden he returned to Hungary in 2006 and joined Gedeon Richter Plc. to lead the technology development for biosimilar medicine production using bacteria (E.coli) as well as mammalian (CHO) cells.

In 2014 he formed the Biotechnology unit in the newly established Pharmatech Model Laboratory (PML) at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, where he is also holding an Honorary Professorship. Since November 2016 he responsible for the recombinant protein development and production of human diagnostic at the Diagon Ltd, Budapest.