Elke's deep passion about biology roots back to her education as a bio engineer, cellular and genetic biotechnology, after which she achieved a doctoral degree on a topic within the field of immunology. The same group went on to later become ImCyse, a clinical-stage biotech company focusing on immunotherapy.

Eager to see research translated to practice, Elke moved to a professional career in industry starting within the KULeuven technology spin-off Materialise where she focused on bringing added value to difficult orthopaedic surgeries through 3D surgical models and guides.

After a short round in management consultancy, Elke then joined the incubator of tech powerhouse imec, iStart, where she helped establish the digital health vertical and coached several digital health startups (i.e. Ectosense, Epilog, Fibricheck, Lynxcare, Hibbot, Nephroflow, …) all of which successfully raised capital and some of which made a successful exit.

Then Elke moved to the venturing team of imec focusing on venture creation starting from imec hardware technology, she helped built ventures (i.e. Pulsify Medical) and decided to join one herself (Yesse Technologies). She successfully launched and managed the Belgian daughter company of Yesse and build a tech R&D team, secured non-dilutive funding and helped secure dilutive seed funding in the US mother company. However, Yesse did not succeed in raising series A and unique learnings of closing the company ended a truly unique experience.

Nowadays, Elke works as an independent consultant focusing on the intersection of deep tech and biology/health. She offers services to technology companies and institutions as well as start-up/scale-up companies and investors.