Lunch Lecture Aspen Pharma

On the 1st of March at 12.30, Dirk-Jan van Zoelen will give a lunch lecture. He has had various management positions in both R&D and production teams at Aspen Pharma. During the lecture, he will share his passion for the chemistry, sustainability & team-building involved in new pharmaceutical product development. Hope to see you then!

Dirk-Jan introduces himself below:
I am Dirk-Jan van Zoelen, married to Germa for 46 years and proud father of 5 children. I studied chemistry in Leiden and then completed a PhD program at the University of Utrecht. My research focused on protein-protein interactions. We have mimicked these kinds of interactions by using small peptide constructs. After my PhD, I started in 2006 as a Project Manager within the R&D team of Diosynth, the API (Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients) factory of Organon. After 4 years I switched to production and I managed a group of chemical engineers. The processes that I had developed myself in the lab now had to be brought into the factory, quite a challenge! After about three years I took the next step in production and became Operations Manager. Another completely different form of leadership and management. Plant Manager was a logical next step after Operations Manager, I held the position from 2016 to 2019. As plant manager I was part of the site leadership team. Since April 2019 I have returned to R&D, now as Manager of that department. My passion lies in new product development, team building, chemistry/pharma, sustainability and lean-6-sigma.