Management Team

Reini Hurme, PhD, eMBA

Chief Executive Officer, Co-founder

Reini has worked in pharmaceutical industry for 8 years, managing various clinical departments and functions for the Leiras Oy and Schering Oy global organizations. He has worked in academia in the field of biochemistry and molecular biology with notable awards, grants, and publications, conducting research at Insitut Pasteur, Paris and Karolinska Institute, Stockholm. Reini has spent about twenty years abroad both in the US and several European countries.

Reijo Laaksonen, MD, PhD

Chief Medical Officer, Co-founder

Reijo is a clinical pharmacologist specialized in cardiovascular pharmacology. Reijo spent more than six years at the Clinical Research Institute of Montreal  and at the Laboratory of Experimental Neurology, ULB, Brussels  as a post-doctoral fellow and visiting scientist. Prior to joining Zora Reijo has worked as Chief Research Scientist at Viikki Drug Discovery Technology Center, Helsinki and served as a consultant for biotechnology companies. Reijo is co-inventor of several patents.

Kim Ekroos, PhD

Head of Bioanalytics

Kim Ekroos holds a Ph.D from the Technical University of Dresden. He has conducted research in the group of Prof. Kai Simons and Andrej Shevchenko at the Max-Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden. Kim has also worked at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg. He has made major contributions to the advancement of basic research on lipids and their study with advanced mass spectroscopy methods. Kim has also pharmaceutical industry experience from Astra Zeneca where he spent three years successfully developing; high-throughput lipidomic methods. Kim has closely collaborated with various mass spectroscopy, chromatography and biosystem manufacturers. Indeed, many of their products today are based on his work.

Riikka Katainen MSc (Biotech), MSc (Econ)

Project Manager

Riikka Katainen holds an MSc in Biotechnology from University of Jyväskylä. She has worked at University of Helsinki as a researcher. Also, she has studied Business and Economics in University of Jyväskylä. Prior to joining Zora Riikka has worked at Thermo Fisher Scientific and she has experience also from biotechnology start-up companies.