Zara Asgharpour

Director of External Innovations Biologics

Zara Asgharpour leads external innovation partnerships within the Integrated Biologics R&D division at Lonza, one of the world's leading contract development and manufacturing organisations for the biopharmaceutical industry, scouting emerging technologies and structuring collaborations that bring them into large-scale biopharmaceutical development and manufacturing. She holds a PhD in Human Biology from the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich and an MBA from the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge, bringing more than fifteen years of experience in early-innovation partnerships and venture-capital investment. She has held senior innovation-leadership roles across the sector and brings experience from previous positions at Switzerland Innovation, Disulfican, Elavity and the ZEISS Group, and is well known in the industry as a dealmaker connecting emerging biotech innovation with large-scale manufacturing partners.