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Leadership

The leadership team is responsible for the overall strategy and policies and runs Frontiers' operations on a day to day basis.

Kamila Markram

Kamila Markram, PhD

Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Kamila co-founded Frontiers with the vision to make research openly and widely available for the benefit of humanity.

Kamila obtained a MSc in Psychology from the Technical University Berlin and completed her Master’s thesis at the Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research, Germany in 2003. She obtained an award-winning PhD degree in Neuroscience at the EPFL, Switzerland. During her postdoctoral studies at the EPFL she co-developed the 'Intense World Theory of Autism', which proposes that autism results from a 'super-brain' that perceives, absorbs, and feels too much – causing autistic people to withdraw from an overly intense world. The theory resonated beyond the research community, featuring in popular science magazines and documentaries, and published as a book, The boy who felt too much, in 2018. She was named a L’HEBDO Forum 100 personality, a finalist for the 2016 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur Award and the 2017 EU Prize for Women Innovators, and a Special Prize Winner at the Vaud International Business Awards in 2021.

Philipp Lustenberger

Philipp Lustenberger

Chief Financial Officer

Philipp joined Frontiers in 2022 and oversees all financial operations that support the business strategy, including financial planning & analysis, accounting, payroll, procurement, tax, treasury, and corporate development.

Philipp brings many years of experience in strategic finance, serving as CFO of General Assembly, a New York-based global education company that addresses skills gaps through cutting-edge courses in current technology fields. Prior to that he was running Corporate Development and M&A at the Adecco Group in Zurich and has held a string of investment banking positions at Deutsche Bank in both London and Zurich. Philipp received an MBA from the University of St. Gallen in 2002.

Frederick Fenter

Frederick Fenter, PhD

Chief Executive Editor

Fred supervises the entire Frontiers journal portfolio and is directly involved in all strategic projects. He served as publishing consultant during Frontiers’ launch phase in 2006–2008, rejoining in 2013 in his current role. An active advocate for Open Science, Fred frequently organizes and participates in a variety of advocacy events and roundtables.

Fred earned a PhD in Chemistry from Harvard and continued his research on atmospheric compounds at the CNRS in France and EPFL in Switzerland. He moved into academic publishing in 1997, first overseeing a portfolio of journals, book series and major reference works at Elsevier Science and then founding FontisMedia – a publishing technology startup that developed the first multi-language content-management platform for scientific journals. He was also technology advisor for the launch of an institutional document repository (InfoScience) and consulted for the founding of the English-language EPFL Press.

Mirjam Eckert

Mirjam Eckert, PhD

Chief Publishing Officer

Mirjam joined Frontiers in 2014 and has led the Editorial Office since 2015. Appointed as Chief Publishing Officer in 2020, she oversees the strategic direction of the publishing program, spanning journal portfolio development and peer review. She is passionate about leveraging Frontiers Open Science platform and Artificial Intelligence to improve the way research is evaluated and disseminated. 

Mirjam studied for a BSc at Imperial College, London and earned a PhD from the University of Dundee, Scotland in molecular biology. She continued her research on gene expression regulation by a tumour suppressor protein there, then studied anti-viral immunity at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. In 2010 she transitioned into academic publishing, joining the open-access Journal of the International AIDS Society as Managing Editor and attaining board-certification as editor in the life sciences. Mirjam was an elected council member and trustee of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) from 2012 to 2019, where she was the chair of the outreach committee for several years. In 2021 Mirjam attained an MBA from the University of Warwick Business School.

Daniel Petrariu

Daniel Petrariu

Chief Technology Officer

Daniel is responsible for technology at Frontiers. This includes the development and launch of innovative new digital tools and services for researchers, as well as operational tools that enable Frontiers staff to provide a great service. He joined Frontiers’ Product Management team in 2013, which he has led since 2015. In 2020 he was appointed Chief Technology Officer and leads the Product, Engineering, and IT Infrastructure teams.

Daniel's background is in computer science, where he started his career as a software developer before gradually moving into product management. He is a passionate user-experience evangelist with expertise in cloud-based platforms and customer-centric development methodologies.

Kanika Suri Mehra

Kanika Suri Mehra

Chief People Officer

Kanika Suri Mehra, Chief People Officer, joined Frontiers in September 2022 and oversees all aspects of human resources strategy at Frontiers, including talent acquisition, employee engagement, leadership development and compensation and benefits.

Kanika has more than eighteen years’ experience leading human resources for global organizations, including over 11 years at Amazon, where she led the Amazon Web Services (AWS) HR Partners, supporting the hypergrowth in 30+ countries across Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). In addition, she established Amazon's HR Shared Services in Prague, supporting 28,000 EMEA employees. Prior to that, Kanika had successful HR career tenures at Citibank in New York and Microsoft in Seattle. Kanika has a Master’s degree in Industrial Relations and Human Resources from Pennsylvania State University, USA.

Chantelle Rijs

Chantelle Rijs

Chief Marketing and Communications Officer

Chantelle leads a team of marketing, communications and public relations experts working to disseminate research and support Frontiers’ mission to ensure we all live healthy lives on a healthy planet. She joined Frontiers in 2010 and held various positions in Product Development, Strategy and Communications. She managed the launch of the Frontiers Community Platform, the Frontiers Research Network and Loop, before taking over the Marketing and Communications department in 2017.

With a background in arts and education, Chantelle spent several years as a secondary school teacher in London, UK, before joining Illumina Digital – an award-winning multi-platform production company where she was the creative lead in the conception, development and delivery of online educational resources for clients including the BBC, the Diploma Support Program and the Learning and Skills Improvement Service.

Giovanni Lippi

Giovanni Lippi

Chief Planning Officer

Giovanni oversees Frontiers’ Human Resources and Operations teams. He joined Frontiers in 2009 and held various business support roles, including finance and project management.

Holding a Master’s degree in business administration, Giovanni has an extensive, global career in multiple sectors, including equity market trading at Euromobiliare SIM, software product development at Stockpoint Inc and more recently, board member and financial auditor at the Project Management Institute Switzerland Chapter.

Mehmet Toral

Mehmet Toral

Chief Legal Officer

Mehmet is Frontiers' Chief Legal Officer, leading the team that oversees legal and compliance affairs. He joined Frontiers in 2022 to support international growth and development plans.

As a specialist in corporate and commercial law for high-tech matters, Mehmet is regularly called on to give talks on legal issues facing high-growth companies at the cutting edge of technologies, including artificial intelligence, blockchain and smart contracts for the EPFL Center for Digital Trust, MassChallenge Switzerland, and the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.

Board of directors

The board is responsible for the financial and governance oversight of the company.

Henry Markram

Henry Markram, PhD

Co-founder, Board Chairperson

Henry co-founded Frontiers with the goal to accelerate science by making publishing open and technologically efficient.

Henry is a professor of neuroscience at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). He is also the founder of the EPFL’s Brain Mind Institute, founder and director of the Blue Brain Project – a Swiss Brain Initiative to simulate the brain – and the founder of the Human Brain Project, a Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Flagship initiative of the European Commission, awarding €1 Billion over 10 years to develop future neuroscience, future medicine and future computing. Henry has published over 150 research articles and received numerous awards and honours, including the Bell Labs Claude Shannon Visionary Award and the International Hebb Award.

Kamila Markram

Kamila Markram, PhD

Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Kamila co-founded Frontiers with the vision to make research openly and widely available for the benefit of humanity.

Kamila obtained a MSc in Psychology from the Technical University Berlin and completed her Master’s thesis at the Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research, Germany in 2003. She obtained an award-winning PhD degree in Neuroscience at the EPFL, Switzerland. During her postdoctoral studies at the EPFL she co-developed the 'Intense World Theory of Autism', which proposes that autism results from a 'super-brain' that perceives, absorbs, and feels too much – causing autistic people to withdraw from an overly intense world. The theory resonated beyond the research community, featuring in popular science magazines and documentaries, and published as a book, The boy who felt too much, in 2018. She was named a L’HEBDO Forum 100 personality, a finalist for the 2016 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur Award and the 2017 EU Prize for Women Innovators, and a Special Prize Winner at the Vaud International Business Awards in 2021.

Steve Koltes

Steve Koltes

Private Investor, Board Member

Steve is Founder and Co- Chairman of CVC Capital Partners, one of the world’s largest private equity and investment advisory firms, and Deputy Chairman of CVC’s Europe/North America and Asia Pacific Private Equity Boards. He served as Executive Officer at Citibank International (1980–1987) and is or has been a member of a number of supervisory boards including Evonik Industries (2008–2016), AHT Cooling Systems, Elster Group and Flint Group.