Laia Arnal Arasa

Laia Arnal is a biologist (University of Barcelona), Executive MBA, and Senior Management Program in Health Institutions (PADIS) by IESE Business School. Since 2016 she has been the Business Development Director at VHIR. She promotes new business opportunities and strategic alliances at national and international level. She is responsible for the technology transfer and innovation unit; fosters disruptive and collaborative R+D+I biomedical projects throughout the Vall d’Hebron University Hospital Campus; promotes strategic alliances with companies, academic and technological entities and public-private partnerships; fosters commercialization of the technology portfolio and spin-off and start-up creation. She participates in the design of new research funding instruments and new training programs. She is member of the Steering Committee of the National Platform of R+D+I in Biomedicine and Health Sciences (ITEMAS platform) of the Spanish Health Ministry, and co-coordinator of the EUHA Innovation Network (European University Hospital Alliance).

She is actively involved in several sectorial nets and professional associations, and evaluator and consultant for entrepreneurial and innovation programs. For more than 8 years she promoted and dinamized the cluster BioRegion of Catalonia at Biocat, fostering strategic initiatives like the European Institute of Technology EITHealth; MOEBIO, organizing delegations in sectorial congresses and fairs and launching training programs of health innovation and entrepreneurship Design Health Barcelona and BioEmprenedorXXI. In 2014 she became Director of B·DEBATE, International Center for Scientific Debate Barcelona.