Leadership

A qualified nuclear medicine specialist, ablative radiation immunologist, with more than 20 years’ experience in bioscience research and innovation, Dr. George Syrmalis knew that to create the medicines of tomorrow, he had to design a new kind of enterprise.

In 2010, Dr. Syrmalis founded The iQ Group Global to converge life science investment banking, scientific discovery and commercialisation to bring medical innovations to the world. As CEO, Dr. Syrmalis creates the vision and the pathway to strengthen the long-term sustainability of the Group and accelerate the Group’s growth at higher rates than that of the global market. He empowers The Group’s team of experts to take risks and look at the same challenge through their own divergent perspectives.

Before 2010, Dr. Syrmalis has held the following roles:

• Executive Director of Innogenetics Solvay Pharma, a pharmaceutical and diagnostics company headquartered in Belgium, from January 2009 to January 2010;
• Executive medical director of UCB Biopharma (Union Chimique Belge), a multinational biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Belgium, from January 2007 to January 2009; and
• Previously, from 1995 to 2005, Dr. Syrmalis founded and led, as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman, The Bionuclear Group SA, which was a biotechnology company specialising in developing radiolabeled antibody therapeutics.

Dr. Syrmalis’ interests and experience lie in translational medicine, clinical trials, biomarkers and strategy to commercialise novel biologic entities in the areas of oncology, epilepsy and autoimmune diseases. Dr. Syrmalis is a fellow of the American Academy of Pharmaceutical Physicians, the American College of Nuclear Physicians, the American College of Nuclear Medicine and the New York Academy of Sciences.

With more than 30 years’ experience in finance, accounting and taxation, IPOs, capital raising, and business system designs including the application of IFRS and US GAAP for the life science industry, Spiro Sakiris serves as Chief Financial Officer at GBS Inc. and leads the financial team as Special Projects Lead for The iQ Group Global.

Mr. Sakiris has served as the Special Projects Lead at The iQ Group Global since January 2018, and as a registered Series 28 principal with IQ Capital (USA) LLC, a registered broker-dealer with FINRA, since November 2016. From 2013 to December 2017, Mr. Sakiris served as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer for listed entities at The iQ Group Global. He worked at Economos Chartered Accountants from 1986 to 2013, which included 23 years as a partner where he was instrumental in the development of the firm’s practice. During his 32 years of experience, Mr. Sakiris has been involved in advising businesses in the areas of accounting and taxation, business advisory, initial public offerings and capital raising, business risks identification and management and business systems designs across many industries, including the application of IFRS and U.S. GAAP for the life science industry. Mr. Sakiris is also well versed in dealings with companies based in overseas jurisdictions such as Asia, Europe and the United States. He is also a registered company auditor experienced in United States reporting under Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in the United States and a registered tax agent in Australia.

Mr. Sakiris is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accounts of Australia & New Zealand.

Lei XU holds the position of Acting Director, Corporate Finance and Advisory of The iQ Group Global. In her role, Ms. XU leads a team of financial professionals to provide corporate finance and corporate advisory services for biotech companies in finding, funding, corporatising and capitalising early stage biotech assets. She joined iQ3Corp in 2014. Her previous roles with the Group include Director, APAC and Director, Structured Investment Products.

Ms. XU holds a BSc in Accounting from Jiangsu University, an MSc in Management from the University of Stirling, and an MBA (Executive) from AGSM (the Australian Graduate School of Management). She is a Fellow Member of ACCA and a member of China Certified Tax Agents.

A world-leading chemist, Prof. Jonathan Sessler is Non-Executive Director at the board of OncoTEX Inc. and the co-inventor TEX Core, a novel oncology platform with the ability to develop a range of well-tolerated, MRI-detectable cancer therapeutics that target drug-sensitive and drug-resistant solid tumors. The first cancer therapy in development is OxaliTEX, indicated for ovarian cancer, which is in development with OncoTEX Inc., a member company of The iQ Group Global.

Obtaining a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry with the Highest Honours from The University of California, Berkeley, Prof. Sessler completed his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry at Stanford University in 1982. He continued as a post-doctoral fellow at L’Université Louis Pasteur. Prolific in his leading research, Prof. Sessler has authored or co-authored more than 600 publications. He holds more than 70 US patents and has been recognised for his contribution to science with awards such as the Sloan Fellow (1999), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (1999), Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar (1999), ACS Cope Scholar (1999), recipient of the JSPS and Alexander von Humboldt Senior Fellowships (1999), and winner of the Izatt-Christensen Award (1999).

Since 1984, Prof. Sessler has been a Professor of Chemistry at The University of Texas Austin, one of the world’s leading basic and applied research facilities, and currently holds The Doherty-Welch Chair. In 1991 he co-founded Pharmacyclics, a pharmaceutical research company previously listed on Nasdaq.

Dr. Jonathan Arambula is the Vice President of Research at OncoTEX Inc. and the co-inventor of TEX Core, a novel oncology platform that is able to develop a range of well-tolerated, MRI-detectable cancer therapeutics that target drug-sensitive and drug-resistant solid tumors. The first cancer therapy in development is OxaliTEX, indicated for ovarian cancer.

Dr. Arambula brings decades of experience in oncology research and therapeutics to the Ethical Bioscience Investments team. He joined The iQ Group Global from the University of Texas at Austin, where he served as a Research Associate and Lecturer focused on the discovery of novel cancer therapeutics in the Department of Chemistry. Prior to that, Dr. Arambula was an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at Georgia Southern University.

Dr. Arambula received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and served as an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow at both the University of Texas at Austin and MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Dr. Margelis is a medical practitioner who has focused his career on identifying and driving innovation in healthcare and bioscience for the last 30 years. With broad experience in senior executive and advisory positions in healthcare, Dr. Margelis has a deep understanding of the early-stage technological and scientific innovation required to create meaningful, lasting impact at both a corporate and public level.

From 2002 to 2005, he was the Chief Information Officer of Macquarie Health Corporation, a private hospital group, and also managed an innovative software development team at Macquarie that produced a number of online health applications. From here, Dr. Margelis held the role of Health Industry Lead ANZ at Intel from 2005 to 2011, and then General Manager Asia-Pacific at Intel-GE Innovations as it spun off in 2011. In 2014, he returned to Intel serving as its Health & Life Sciences Lead until 2016. During this time Dr. Margelis also acted as senior adviser to HIMSS, the international peak body for health technology, and as Asia Pacific chair of the Continua Alliance, an industry consortium for developing interoperability standards for health technology products that was later renamed the Personal Connected Health Alliance. In addition to these roles, Dr. Margelis served as a member of Ignition Labs, a start-up incubator in the health space, where he acted as a mentor and adviser to selected start-ups, assisting them in developing their products from 2013 to 2018. For his work in the use of technology in aged care, Dr Margelis was recognised the IT in the Aged Care Hall of Fame in 2014. In 2019, Dr. Margelis was appointed independent chair of the Aged Care Industry Information Technology Council in Australia. Since November 2013, he also has been a board member and the medical advisor of Multicultural Care, an aged care provider in Sydney. In June 2013, he was appointed an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Western Sydney with the TeleHealth Research & Innovation Laboratory.

Dr. Margelis is a trained optometrist with a Master’s degree from the University of New South Wales, a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from the University of Sydney.

Dr. Tom Parmakellis has 25 years’ experience as a medical practitioner and entrepreneur. Starting his career at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney, Dr. Parmakellis holds a MBBS from the University of Sydney, is a Fellow of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (FRACGP) and a Fellow of the Cosmetic Physicians College Australasia (FCPCA).

In addition to his medical expertise, Dr. Parmakellis is an experienced entrepreneur, understanding the importance of vetting and selecting innovation early to create an edge in market.

A practising pharmacist with 25 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical and medical device sectors, Ms Kolivos has considerable expertise demonstrating the clinical and economic value of a wide range of innovative therapies using evidence-based strategies to maximise patient access across healthcare markets.

With expertise in the areas of health economics, health technology assessment, health outcomes research and real world evidence generation, as Chief Scientific Officer, CRC & Farmaforce, Ms Kolivos develops and implements medical affairs and market access solutions from pre-product registration through to post-market launch, enabling funding and subsequent patient access to new medicines. This is a critical part of the therapeutic product life cycle so that patients worldwide can access new medical innovations.

Before joining The iQ Group Global in 2016, Ms Kolivos held several key roles including:

• Asia-Pacific Director for Reimbursement and Patient Therapy Access at Medtronic Australasia, focusing on market access strategies for new diabetes medical technologies.
• Medical and Corporate Affairs Manager at iNova Pharmaceuticals (formerly 3M Pharmaceuticals) for the Asia-Pacific and South Africa.
• Health Economics Manager at Wyeth Australia – a pharmaceutical company where Athena began the health economics function for Australia and New Zealand.

With therapeutic area experience spanning endocrinology, neuroscience, gastroenterology, rheumatology, dermatology, vaccines, women’s health and organ transplantation, Ms Kolivos’s key interests include the creation of strategies grounded on rigorous scientific, health economic and other evidence to quantify and communicate therapy value in driving commercialisation and market uptake. Ms Kolivos holds a Pharmacy Degree, as well as three Master Degrees in Public Health, Commerce (Accounting and Commercial Administration) and Arts (Communication Management).