In this episode, we welcome Alfonso, CEO at Leon Research and Managing Board Member and Marketing Director at AICROS, for an in-depth conversation on leadership, clinical research, and business development in the pharmaceutical industry.

Alfonso has 14 years of experience in managerial and executive roles, with the last 10 years dedicated to clinical investigation. Originally trained in psychology, his curiosity and passion for continuous learning have driven a career that blends science, strategy, and people-centered leadership.

As CEO of Leon Research, a full-service CRO operating in Southern Europe, Alfonso leads with a clear mission: to grow the organization by empowering its people and staying true to core principles of intelligence, creativity, flexibility, and honesty. Through AICROS, he has also played a key role in designing and implementing sales and marketing strategies that strengthen client relationships and expand business opportunities across the CRO alliance.

This episode features Steven Collens, CEO of MATTER, a premier healthcare incubator and innovation hub that has supported over 1,000 healthcare startups. MATTER helps entrepreneurs and organizations innovate faster and more efficiently while increasing the likelihood of long-term success.

Founded by Steven in 2015, MATTER provides an accelerator-as-a-service solution for health systems, life sciences companies, payers, and foundations seeking to collaborate with startups, while also working directly with established companies to strengthen their innovation capabilities.

Steven previously served as Senior Vice President at Pritzker Group, where he helped create 1871, Chicago’s digital startup center and the world’s top-ranked business incubator in 2018. His background also includes leadership roles at Abbott and public service as a legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Carol Moseley-Braun.

In this episode, we discuss the evolution of healthcare innovation, building successful startup ecosystems, and how organizations can work more effectively with entrepreneurs to drive meaningful change.

In this episode, we sit down with Pablo Yarza, a bioinformatics expert with over 15 years of experience developing advanced databases for both academic and industrial applications.

Throughout his career, Pablo has gained deep insight into one of the most critical challenges in R&D: data curation. He explains how poor-quality or inaccessible data can significantly delay research and development projects, and why this issue is often underestimated.

These challenges led him to found BIOINFILE, a company with a clear mission: to make high-quality data more accessible to R&D professionals across sectors. As Pablo firmly believes, good data is the foundation of progress.