Dr. Joachim Rautter is responsible for investment strategy and portfolio management of PEPPERMINT Venture Capital Fund. He has extensive experience with technology start-ups and financing tools and coaches more than 40 companies in the areas of bio-, micro- and nanotechnology. Dr. Rautter is a trained physicist and biophysical chemist who gained his PhD in 1995 from the Technical University of Berlin. Dr. Rautter advises JADO on financial engineering and strategic development.

Dr. Nastos has held several positions within the German life science industry focusing on venture financing, most recently at the NRW BANK in Duesseldorf as Investment Manager. Previously he also worked at Peppermint Financial Partners in Berlin concentrating on investments in life sciences and nanotechnologies. His deep scientific background has allowed him the seamless transition from academia to industry and finance. With a Masters of Science in Biology from the Ruhr-University of Bochum and subsequent Research Fellowship at the Dept. for Cell Biology at the University of Essen (PhD) and a Post Doc at the Randal Institute of the King's College in London (UK) as an International Fellow of The Wellcome Trust, he was able to successfully take on the position of Head of the Research Group at the German Diabetes Institute in Düsseldorf.

Prof. Simons is a world leader in membrane dynamics and the pioneer of the raft concept and their role of rafts in cell function and diseases. He has been honoured many times for his contibutions to molecular cell biology. In 1975, he became Group Leader at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany and started the Cell Biology Program that became the focal point for molecular cell biology in Europe over the next 25 years. He became a member of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, in 1997 and is the first President of the newly formed European Life Science Organization (ELSO). Prof. Simons served for five years on the scientific advisory board of Biogen Inc.