Get to know us

Since my childhood I have always been fascinated by medical technology. I used to play with medical instruments of my father, who is a physician, and I dreamt of creating something magical that could help people. So, no surprise, that as grown-up I decided to study Biomedical Engineering. In particular, I was interested in medical devices used in hospital and their clinical assessments, especially regarding the implementation of medical technology for improvement of the quality and effectiveness of patient care.

During my master’s thesis at an Italian company, Masmec Biomed, I worked on a Health Technology Assessment Report for the medical device used for biopsy and thermal ablation of lung’s tumor. Now, already having an experience in the biomedical company, due to my interest in the clinical evaluations of medical devices, I wanted to find a job in a hospital environment. I worked for a year in a Clinical Engineering Service of the Province of Cosenza.

It was an interesting job, however my ambitions were not fully satisfied as I was thriving for a dynamic job in an international environment. This led me to make a decision to leave Italy and find a new challenging job in The Netherlands. That is when I met Fabio! He presented me Bambi Medical and his project of the Bambi-Belt. I thought: “What can be more challenging and dynamic than the startup world?” So, the decision was made!

Thanks to the Bambi Belt Solution, we can give hopes to parents who dream to cuddle their baby. I am sure that this experience can enhance my professional knowledge, but above all my personality. I am very glad to help preterm infants and to work with the Bambi team!

After finishing my job in the corporate world of Philips I have been looking at start-ups that could benefit from my background and experience in business-to-business marketing and marketing communication. It couldn’t be just any start-up; it had to be one that really had the potential to make a difference, to improve people’s lives emotionally or physically.

Along came Bambi Medical. What a great story. Being able to support the growth of pre-mature babies by eliminating these pesky leads and stickers that prevent them from having that much needed skin contact and bonding moments with parents and care-givers. What a great idea. I did not hesitate and took the decision after the first meeting. I wanted to be a part of this.

So here I am, trying to put Bambi Medical on the map and using my skills as a marketing communication and branding professional. To make you, dear reader, just as enthusiastic about this innovation as I am.

So who am I? I have been working for Philips most of my career. Started out with Hearing aids, moved to Test and measurement equipment, which later became part of Fluke. Went back to Philips to start in the semiconductor area, which became NXP and where I played a leading role in the creation of the NXP brand. Back to Philips again, lighting, where I focused on thought-leadership programs around Human Centric Lighting e.g. how lighting can improve our health and well being.

In between all this I went back to school and obtained a Master degree in Marketing with a thesis focused on branding through social media in a business-to-business environment.

Except for some time living and working in Silicon Valley for Philips I have lived most of my life in Eindhoven, breeding ground of many innovations.

I am looking forward to the time that the innovation of the Bambi-belt by Bambi Medical will make a huge difference in father and mother bonding with their pre-mature babies, giving them that extra boost for a happy and healthy life in spite of the circumstances around their birth.

Since my childhood I had been dreaming to become a doctor. I had not made up my mind what kind of doctor exactly, but it was clear that I would be stepping into the footsteps of my father, who is a pediatrician (neonatologist to be precise).

I was lucky enough to obtain an entry ticket into medical school in Groningen. It was a fun year, living on my own and enjoying student life. I even had classes taught by my dad, which was a nice experience! However, upon successfully closing the first year, I realized that becoming a doctor was not my thing and, therefore, decided to leave med school and study Actuarial Sciences in Amsterdam.

For me this step made a lot of sense as I was also very interested in Economics. In addition to that mathematics was a subject at school that I was quite good at, so I decided to study Econometrics / Actuarial Science. I thought that it would be more challenging than Economics, and believe me, it was!

Getting my masters degree in Actuarial Sciences opened the doors to very interesting positions at great companies. I worked with a great pleasure for two multinational companies (Deloitte and Mars) over the last 13 years, and was really enjoying myself as factory controller of the chocolate factory in Veghel. At the same time, I had already been advising my dad on how to bring his great inventions to market. At the end it became clear that the only way to have a real chance of succeeding, would be to give it all my time and attention.

With these thoughts in mind, I said goodbye to all my colleagues and great job at Mars and started working for Bambi Medical as per March 1, 2016. It has been an awesome experience so far!

In my childhood driven to help people I dreamt to become a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF. I was excited with the work that Audrey Hepburn had done in Ethiopia and I wanted to be like her. When I grew up, I realized that becoming a goodwill ambassador was not realistic - this is an honour of very famous people only. Instead I chose journalism that gave me an opportunity to serve people by reporting issues of different groups of society. During my seven year career I was mostly focused on covering social topics – such as refugee crises in Georgia after war with Russia in 2008, healthcare topics, minority issues in Georgia. It was particularly rewarding to witness my articles leading to positive changes in the covered issues.

With appearance of social media and its increasing power I became interested in this new form of media communication. In particular, I wondered how new ways of communication empowered people by making them creators and broadcasters of the content themselves. I explored this phenomenon during my Research Master. Being immersed in the field and my childhood passion never lost, I decided to switch from practical journalism to communication management. In particular to help companies focusing on development of products facilitating well being of society.

That is why I was happy when I learned about Bambi Medical and was really excited to become a part of the team. To me Bambi Medical is the company that aims to serve society by improving quality of life of premature babies from their very first days of being on this planet. I believe that the Bambi-Belt has a great potential it will be a game changer in premature baby care.

Eindhoven is my hometown! After happily living in Utrecht to study medicine for six years, I felt very fortunate to find the job of my dreams in the city of my dreams.

Ever since I was a child, I have always been fascinated with biology and physiology, in particular the human mind. I even choose to study Cognitive Artificial Intelligence initially, but that curriculum turned out not to satisfy my hunger for understanding human nature. Even though I was not sure I wanted to be a doctor, switching to med school seemed the logical thing to do. Six years later, I had loved everything I learned, but I still doubted whether I wanted to become a clinical practitioner. It was then that I met Sidarto. We discussed the biochemistry of parent-infant bonding, and the challenge to optimize this at NICUs. I felt it back then, I am sure of it now: parent-infant bonding is the essence of human nature. I was sold. Eindhoven, here I come!

From that moment, I started doing a Ph.D. project with the goal to enhance parent-infant bonding at a NICU, which I will finish in the next two months. Over the years, I have performed several clinical studies, seen many preterm infants, and spoken to numerous parents, doctors and nurses – I have enjoyed every day of it. I am therefore grateful and proud that this resulted in a position as Clinical Trial Consultant for Bambi-Medical, which I will take up after finishing my thesis. So far, the team has been very welcoming and the energy and passion to MAKE BABY LIVES HAPPIER FROM DAY ONE is clearly tangible during each meeting. I am looking forward to it!

When I first time heard about Bambi Belt, I was really impressed. I thought - what a cuddly product, improving premature babies’ lives! I learned about Bambi Belt from Fabio, CEO of Bambi Medical. Apart from being attracted to the product, I was really impressed with Fabio’s commitment and passion for Bambi Belt.

The timing of our meeting was really perfect, as I was planning to retire from ASML, the world’s leading lithography supplier for the semiconductor industry, where I have spent most of my career and I was looking for an opportunity to share my experience with an enthusiastic team.

At ASML I worked for 23 years and before that at Philips. In both companies I have held various managerial positions. At Philips I was responsible for planning and execution of manufacturing sites for high tech products, including Active Matrix LCD and Semiconductors. At ASML I was program manager for the leading-edge lithography product (TwinscanTM) before being responsible for all ASML product development programs, I was also manager of Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) source development, including source suppliers and business line manager for ASML largest product line. Before joining Bambi, I held position of Executive Vice President of worldwide Strategic Sourcing and Procurement. At the same time, I was head of ASML Netherlands BV and member of the ASML Executive Committee.

After this long journey at multinational companies, I find it really exciting to join dynamic start-up environment at Bambi as COO of the company. I like the chemistry of the team and day to day efforts of bringing the Bambi Belt solution to all premature babies.

My journey to Bambi Medical has been a long one. It started, I suppose, when I was at University in London studying Pharmacology and realizing that I was not a scientist and wondered what I was going to do after I graduated. I ended up working in the City of London for a firm of Accountants and Auditors; I thought that money made the world go round. I also wanted to travel and thought a financial qualification would help and it did. After becoming a Chartered Accountant I went to Johannesburg, South Africa for two years with one of the big 4 accounting firms. Nelson Mandela had just been released from jail and there was a great vibe in the country. I had a wonderful time outside of work, whereas, I was very unsatisfied with my job; working in the accounting profession was not for me. After that I moved into the corporate world taking on various financial positions in various part of the world. I wanted to be involved in a company where I could be proud of what it was doing and feel part of a dynamic team contributing to its success.

It’s been a long and interesting journey and here I am as the Financial Controller of a company developing a wonderful product to help premature babies, parents and nurses in a win, win, win situation. I’ve gone from thinking money makes the world go round to babies are our future. I’m much happier working with a team with the common purpose of making babies lives happier from day one.

I studied Applied Physics at the Eindhoven University of Technology because of my interest in science. I realized however that I am interested in so much more than just science and came to the conclusion that I would not become a scientific researcher, although it was not clear to me yet which professional path I would eventually choose.

I started my career at DSM, an international company active in Life Sciences & Performance Materials, within the field of purchasing. A great step to gain a lot of expertise and knowledge on working in cross-functional multidisciplinary projects within dynamic environments. When I got the opportunity to work on a small nutrition project in Zambia with the United Nations World Food Programme (partnering with DSM), I realized that ‘improving life’ is an important motive to me in a professional function. When, in addition, I started missing the science and technology aspects within my job, I knew it was time to look for a new challenge.

My switch to Nemo Healthcare, a medical device start-up company active in the field of fetal monitoring, was a logic and perfect next step. I loved the diversity of a start-up company and being able to actively contribute to a wide range of fields such as product development, clinical research, usability engineering, regulatory affairs, product certification and (after)sales. I greatly enjoyed helping Nemo Healthcare grow from a start-up to a mature scale-up and am proud to have fulfilled a key role in realizing its ambition to develop a CE-marked fetal monitor from concept to release.

I now knew exactly which key elements drive and motivate me on a professional and personal level: entrepreneurship, product development and improving life. All elements that are strongly present within Bambi Medical, making it the perfect fit for a new challenge. As I was also very impressed by the knowledge and experience available in the Bambi team and the many achievements realized in the relative short timeframe since its foundation, I decided to join the company.

I am proud to be part of the team and feel strongly committed to developing great products that will make babies lives happier from day one!

I was born and raised in Eindhoven, the city of technology. From the first memories I have, anything technical interested me. I was particularly interested in “invisible” technologies such as electronics and chemistry, therefore, it was not a hard choice for me to study Electrical Engineering at the Technical University of Eindhoven (TU/e).

After completion of my studies and obtaining a PhD, in 2007, I started working for DutchAero, the old Philips Aerospace company. First, I worked as a research leader on Electrochemical Machining and, later, became a manager for advanced technologies (R&D) as well a member of the company’s Management Team.

Although the job at DutchAero was great and I enjoyed every minute of it, I felt that something was missing, therefore, I made a conscious decision to step over to an engineering company – Demcon. There I worked mainly on high-tech designs for ASML, however, I also had a chance to work on the Macawi blower module for respiratory systems. This was my first experience with a medical device and it inspired me to take my next step to a large medical company.

For this reason, I started working at Philips IGT systems in 2015 as a Senior Electrical Designer and was promoted 2 years later to a manager of the mechatronics hardware department. In this role I was responsible for large parts of the system such as the hardware infrastructure, power infrastructure and electromagnetic compatibility (EMC). The next step within Philips was to lead the innovation team of IPL (Intense Pulse Light hair-removal) products.

Although IPL is considered as a medical device, it does not really “treat” people. I felt that I did not have enough purpose in my job. So, when I met Fabio, listened to his enthusiasm for the Bambi Belt system, it was quite clear what I wanted - to move out of Philips and join the Bambi Medical team. It is very inspiring to listen to every single team member talking so passionately about this product and the impact it will have on the users - premature babies. I am very happy to join this team and contribute to the success of the Bambi Belt system.

After finishing my studies of communication in Utrecht and internships at advertising agencies, the creative jobs I was looking for were hard to find… I started working as an editor of schoolbooks (Wolters-Noordhoff, later Kluwer). I liked being part of the book publishing process - learning a lot about book creation and school teaching methods. Then we moved to Eindhoven and here I joined a med-tech start-up Plasmacure, as a team assistant. The company creates a great innovation for chronic wound treatment, and I enjoyed being part of this journey. However, after a while, it was time to move on and Bambi came along – with a product that is very close to my heart.

I am blessed with three kids. My firstborn was a dysmature baby, and she spent her first days in the NICU in the hospital. No emergencies, but just until she could keep herself warm. That period makes it possible for me to say: “ I’ve been there…”

Recently I also experienced having electrodes attached to my own skin. This feeling was so unpleasant and lasted for days. I still remember this now. Therefore, I would l like to support the elimination of using electrodes for fragile premature babies. Their skin is even much thinner than mine!

I have always felt the need to help people with their health and wellbeing but did not follow any medical education. Through my jobs first at Plasmacure and now at Bambi, I do feel I can contribute to the well-being of patients and their parents… so that makes me happy. Even though I do not directly participate in product development, by assisting my team I give them the time to focus and deliver the Bambi Belt, a wonderful product aiming to improve babies’ lives.

Working for a start-up is finding out things, and really combining the knowledge and efforts to achieve those goals together. Being part of the High Tech Campus makes it extra inspiring – it has a nice atmosphere and gives you a good vibe. We have a lot of contact with other companies and start-ups around us. I bike my way to the campus with pleasure.

Within the office, the team is obviously dedicated to the product and the targets we have. The team is a mix of different nationalities, which surprisingly broadens my perspective. I feel very much at home, due to this motivated team. I am happy to be here!

In 1951 I was born in Leiden and spent my childhood in Oegstgeest were I attended the Rijnlands Lyceum. Even as a child I expressed the wish to become a medical doctor. And so I started studying medicine in Groningen.

When graduation approached I found myself in the luxurious position to be able to choose between further training in pediatric oncology and neonatology. Both fields were interesting, but the latter attracted me more, because it is most rewarding to cure a serious disease and give patients a long life to enjoy afterwards.

After spending almost 20 years in Groningen I was asked to come to the Maxima Medical Center (MMC) in Veldhoven to accept a position there in 2003. Given the great collaboration between the TU/e and the MMC I was appointed as a part-time professor Industrial Design where I worked on "design of technology for improving comfort of the premature baby".

Together with students I worked on a lot of projects and developed multiple prototypes aimed at improving the quality of life of the premature baby and the parent-child bonding. One of the project I worked on was the Smart Jacket, the predecessor of the Bambi-Belt.

I tried to get companies interested to adopt the Smart Jacket and bring it to the market. Most parties that I met, showed their interest and enthusiasm, but were reluctant to proceed in taking next steps. It was not before 2012 that the next iteration could be made, thanks to a grant of a pharmaceutical company. After this it was still difficult to bring the product development forward by myself.

Finding myself in a blind alley again, I almost came to a point to accept the fact that the Smart Jacket for babies in the NICU was not more than an illusion. So I was very pleased that my son, Fabio, showed more and more interest to take up the challenge of bringing the product to market. On one evening he said to me: “Hey dad, we're not going to let your bright ideas disintegrate on the shelf. Let's start our own business!”

I was always going to be a nurse and my journey has been a voyage of discovery. During my internships in a hospital I learned a great deal by working in various specialized departments and it was during this time that Neonatology stood out, head and shoulders, above the rest. It was at the Jeroen Bosch Hospital where my experience in the field of high care neonatology began. My focus area was development-oriented care for the newborn and this remains to this day. After more than 11 years I switched to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at the Maxima Medical Center to further develop my specialization. Much love and suffering have been shared with the parents of this tiny vulnerable patient group and I started to delve into the behaviour of premature and sick babies. At the start of their lives, they immediately go through a turbulent period and it’s clear that pain and stress should be minimized for better development despite the necessary ICU treatment. I wanted to be able to better support the parents in understanding their premature babies and empowering them to have a proactive role as parents.

I obtained my master certificate as a NIDCAP (neonatal individualized development care assessment programme) Professional at the Erasmus MC training center. Since then I have observed many babies and through their behaviour been able to interpret this for their parents so they know what their baby needs. My next area of expertise gradually became clear and that was the Family Centered Care/Family Integrated Care. The importance of parents being involved in caring for their newborn is significant and this is becoming clearer through more research. Kangaroo Care, as part of the intensive care treatment plan, is a way of keeping the baby close to one of its parents. My challenge was to think of more possibilities to improve the bonding between the parents and their baby, which led me on a path to Bambi Medical. For years I brainstormed with Sidarto Bambang Oetomo about wireless monitoring, because, in my experience, this enables the unique opportunity for parents to be able to take direct care of their baby outside of the incubator. At Bambi Medical, as a product specialist, I will be the important link between the industry and the hospital. The main goal for me is to make the life of the premature or sick baby more comfortable with less pain and stress despite the necessary ICU treatment. Together with the team at Bambi Medical, we will support the development of the baby during the most vulnerable period of their lives!

From an early age, my fascination with electronics and technology created a passion that has shaped my professional journey. It wasn't long before my interest in electronics led me to the field of medicine, a crossover that defined my career path.

During my academic years, my experience during a school internship at Dräger introduced me to the medical field. This encounter marked my journey where the world of electronics merged with healthcare, thus becoming an integral part of my career.

I ventured through diverse roles, working as a contractor for companies like ASML and Philips Healthcare and contributing to an in-house project focused on a pain relief device.

A defining decision in my career was to join LifeSense Group, a small but pioneering health tech company dedicated to addressing mild incontinence. This marked a shift in focus towards leveraging technology to enhance the quality of life for those facing such challenges.

My journey led me to Bambi Medical, where a breakthrough innovation revolutionized the approach to electrodes. At Bambi Medical, our work enables the elimination of cumbersome electrodes, a significant advancement that impacts the lives of prematurely born infants in incubators and their parents.

This innovation is important, especially for caring for these fragile infants, making their time in the incubator more comfortable and less intrusive.

Since childhood, I have been driven by the potential that technology can bring into our lives. Hailing from Mozambique, over 8000 kilometers away from Eindhoven, I've spent nearly a decade abroad in Europe. My journey began in the Republic of Ireland, where I initially grappled with uncertainty about my career path during my initial studies. However, I was always captivated by works depicting the significant role technology could play in medicine, its impact over the last century, and the endless possibilities for the future. This fascination remained a constant, guiding me toward my true calling. I moved to the UK to complete my bachelor's in Electrical Engineering, and soon after, I pursued a master's in Biomedical Engineering. It was during this time that I was formally introduced to the world of medical technology and the diverse research and development activities within the field.

To make the most of my background, I became particularly involved with neurotechnology and neural engineering. This interest deepened during my EngD at TU/e, where I collaborated closely with a joint team from TU/e and UMCU (Utrecht Medical Center University). We explored the potential of novel electronics and circuitry for established medical devices, particularly brain-computer interfaces.

These experiences solidified my commitment to working with medical devices. I developed a profound appreciation and understanding of the rigorous efforts required to bring innovative devices to fruition. Joining Bambi Medical presents a valuable opportunity to learn about the entire process of conceptualizing an idea and systematically bringing it to market, ensuring compliance with all regulations and protocols. This is crucial when the product directly interfaces with premature babies. I am excited to be part of this noble cause and look forward to contributing to the success of the Bambi Belt solution. I believe that with dedicated and focused effort, we can make a significant difference in the lives of those born under challenging circumstances.