Carmen Palomino

Carmen Palomino is the founder of Zirka InnoTech. For 14-years, she was focused on research in the fields of molecular biology, Biotech and microbiology, where she conducted her Ph.D. and two postdocs in leading European centres, CNB-CSIC (Spain), John Innes Institute (UK), and the ETH (Zurich). Thanks to her long research experience and having been the former scientific director of the Spanish-based Biotech company (Biodan Science), she started collaborations with innovative and disruptive European SMEs. Her expertise in obtaining public funds with European grants (Marie Curie Fellowships and EMBO grant) and national funds (CDTI) allowed her to raise €18.7 M for more than 18 European SMEs. During these years, Carmen has been awarded by Fundación Pino and Merck for the “Women & Leadership program” held by Aliter, International School of Business (2012); by the European Patent Office (EPO) for the “Workshop in Intellectual property Rights for Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellows” held in Munich at EPO headquarters (2014), and by IE School of Business for the “Winning Strategies for International Growth” (2021). She was also a CFA level 1 candidate in 2019. Thanks to her professional journey, the close interaction with the European technology companies, and after living in Mexico for three years, in 2021, she launched Zirka InnoTech to establish a bridge between Europe and LATAM for innovation expansion and technology transfer.