Marcel Thalen is Vice-President, Drug Product Development for ILiAD. He has 30 years of experience in process development, manufacturing, and drug development of vaccines and other (live) biologicals. Marcel is an expert in the physiology of bacterial pathogens, exploiting this knowledge to increase the productivity and consistency of manufacturing and thereby the quality of the resulting products. Marcel started his career at the RIVM/Netherlands Vaccine Institute (NVI) where he had increasing responsibilities, advancing to Department Head of Process Development. Subsequently, Marcel became Scientific Officer for SynCo Bio Partners (a leading contract manufacturing organization) where he managed process development and GMP manufacturing projects involving live biologicals including lyophilization development. More recently, Marcel has held executive positions in drug development for Qu Biologicals and GT Biologics. Marcel received his PhD in Biotechnology from Wageningen University, where he published his thesis on “Whooping Cough vaccines: production of virulent biomass”, in which he developed an improved chemically defined medium for Bordetella Pertussis.