Christina Egelund
Christina Egelund has been serving as Denmark's Minister of Higher Education and Science since 2022 and is a member of Moderaterne. She has a rich political background, having been a member of Folketinget from 2015 to 2019 representing Liberal Alliance. In addition to her political career, Christina has held significant roles in various organizations such as Dansk Industri, think tank Justita and Rud Pedersen.
Margrethe Vestager
Margrethe Vestager is a prominent Danish politician, former minister, and European commissioner. From 2014 to 2024, she was Denmark’s EU Commissioner, holding key positions in the European Commission, including Executive Vice-President and Commissioner for Competition; here, she focused on digital transformation, data privacy, and artificial intelligence regulation. In 2024, she joined the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford as one of the new World Leaders Fellows — a program to give senior politicians and global leaders a platform to share their experiences and insights after leaving public office. She also serves as the board leader for DTU.
Helmut Schönenberger
Helmut Schönenberger is the co-founder and CEO of UnternehmerTUM, the Center for Innovation and Business Creation at Technische Universität München (TUM). Passionate about scalable tech startups, he focuses on smart enterprises, additive manufacturing, and smart city and mobility solutions. With his background as a founder, aerospace engineer and venture capitalist he loves to help new ventures solve strategy, recruiting, business development and future financing challenges.
Ikhlaq Sidhu
Ikhlaq Sidhu is the Dean and Professor at the School of Science and Technology at IE University in Madrid. Since 2005 he has also been the founding faculty director and Chief Scientist of UC Berkeley’s Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology. He co-developed the Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship and created the Data-X course. An expert in innovation, AI, and data networks, he holds over 60 patents and has received numerous awards. He is also the author of Innovation Engineering and serves in several advisory roles.
Theodor Nielsen
Theodor Nielsen co-founded NIL Technology (NILT) with Brian Bilenberg in 2006. As the CEO of the company Theodor Nielsen led NILT to a 300 million euro exit in 2025, when Taiwanese Radiant Opto-Electronics Corporation acquired the company. NILT initially focused on nanoimprint lithography, but in 2019, Theodor Nielsen led the pivot of NILT towards meta-optics, making NILT the world leader in this field. With around 75 employees, NILT holds more than 70 unique patents and has raised over 70 million euros in equity financing since 2018. Headquartered in Denmark, NILT has operations in Sweden, Switzerland, and Malaysia. Theodor Nielsen holds a civil engineering degree in nanotechnology from DTU (2003).
Irina Borodina
Irina Borodina co-founded BioPhero, a biotech startup developing environmentally friendly pest control solutions, later acquired by FMC Corp for $200m.
As a researcher she leads the Yeast Metabolic Engineering research group at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability at DTU. Her work focuses on engineering yeasts for various applications and advancing metabolic engineering methodologies. She has published 96 peer-reviewed articles and co-invented 22 patent families. Her contributions have earned her awards such as the 2016 Jay Bailey Young Investigator Award and the 2019 EU Women Innovator recognition.
Anders Kjær
Anders is Founder & Managing Partner of PSV Hafnium. Having led investments in more than 30 startups during his more than 8 years in venture capital, founders are well-off with him by their side. His experience, advice and guidance are deeply rooted in the venture journey from lab to market. With a background both in management consulting and on the industry side, he brings in an understanding of how deep tech clients think and what their commercial needs are.
Stine Mølgaard Sørensen
Stine established her first company in 2013 and has since accumulated over 15 years of experience in new technology and digital transformation. This includes a global corporate role and founding several tech startups, one of which she successfully led to a Silicon Valley exit. Later, she co-founded Radiobotics, a health tech startup that brings AI technology to hospitals. Currently, she is a Partner at Alliance VC and serves on numerous boards and commisions. Additionally, she is the Vice-Chair of the Innovation Fund Denmark's expert panel.
Jonas Bjarnø
Jonas Bjarnø is the Chief Scientist and one of the co-founders of Orbex. Jonas has developed and flown hardware systems and instruments for more than 50 spaceflight missions. He has been working with industrial and agency partners such as Lockheed Martin, NASA, ESA, SSC, JAXA, ATK, Orbital Sciences, Airbus and CNES, including suborbital and orbital launches, Earth orbiting satellite missions and payloads to the International Space Station as well as lunar and interplanetary missions to Mars and Jupiter.
Prior to joining Orbex, Jonas was a senior scientist at DTU Space – National Space Institute at the Technical University of Denmark and a Researcher at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Wallops Flight Facility.
Phillip Chambers
Phillip Chambers joined Orbex in January 2024 as Chief Executive Officer, with two decades of experience in building innovative companies and scaling technology platforms for some of Europe’s most successful startups, including Gumtree, Peakon (acquired by Workday), and Qype (acquired by Yelp). Phil was already part of the Orbex journey, becoming an investor in the firm’s Series C funding round in 2022. Most recently Phil led Orbex’s successful £23m close of the first tranche of its Series D funding, as the company prepares for its inaugural launch. His management expertise is complemented by a strong technical foundation, with a BSc in Computer Engineering from Manchester University.