Draft:Antti Heikkilä (entrepreneur)

Antti Heikkilä (born 20 May 1974) is a Finnish CEO, Founder, Serial Entrepreneur, and Investor based in Malta. Heikkilä is best known for his role as Founding Partner at venture builder Acceler8 Limited, where he has also served as CEO since 2016.

At present, Heikkilä serves as Ventures Thrive investment programme coordinator, Commercialisation Director at eBeam4Therapy, and Executive Secretary at Finnish Business Council Malta.

Heikkilä's lengthy and decorated career has also seen him invest directly in and ramp up numerous SMEs around Europe, particularly throughout his tenure as Industry Liaison Officer within Big Science Activation Team Finland at CERN.

Career
Heikkilä presently occupies numerous roles, these include Executive Secretary of Finnish Business Council Malta, CEO and Founding Partner of Acceler8 Limited, Commercialisation Director of eBeam4Therapy, Coordinator of the Ventures Thrive investment programme, and Investor at Genomics Software Suite, which is currently being commercialised.

Prior to these roles, Heikkilä built up a wealth of experience in an array of varied positions, such as Leading Expert in Commercialisation at the University of Eastern Finland, Senior Expert in Innovation Commercialisation at Tampere University of Technology, National Industry Liaison Officer at CERN, Nordic Industry Representative at ESRF, VP for Business Development and Sales at Detech Decision Technologies Ltd., and Consultant for FINPRO and Business Finland.

Ventures Thrive
In 2022, Heikkilä and his team raised €2 million from the European Innovation Council to build the Ventures Thrive investment and growth programme. This endeavour is investing in 32 deeptech startups with the goal of generating further sales and raising external private investment.

The Ventures Thrive action is concentrated on startups at the 'product / market fit' phase and that originate from countries within the Widening Area. This programme is being carried out as a collaboration between Wolves Summit, Anthology Ventures, and Acceler8 Limited.

Acceler8 Limited
Heikkilä has been serving as CEO and Founding Partner of Acceler8 Limited since the company's foundation in October 2016.

Based in Malta, Acceler8 Limited is a venture builder focusing on finding disruptive innovations from high-quality research projects and taking ownership of their commercialisation processes. This includes business development, technology development, and investments.

Acceler8 Limited focuses its efforts in the life science, greentech, and healthtech domains, primarily, whilst also prioritising horizontal technologies such as deeptech. This pipeline originated from the European Research Council, the European Innovation Council, as well as research funded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology.

Acceler8 Limited is a partner of the European Innovation Council and a member of the EBAN network.

CERN
Between June 2001 and March 2014, Heikkilä was stationed at CERN where he built collaboration between industry and academia in order to meet the technology challenges of the Large Hadron Collider and the technical feasibility challenges of the Compact Linear Collider.

Throughout this period, Heikkilä created a number of R&D projects among international consortiums, contributed strongly to the acquisition of external funding, lobbied and networked with various stakeholders, and worked on contract adjudication at the CERN financial council for a total of CHF 3 billion in procurement.

eBeam4Therapy
Heikkilä has served as Commercialisation Director for EIC-funded project eBeam4Therapy since its inception in August 2022. Together with his team, Heikkilä raised €2.5 million for their work on a feasibility demonstration for very high energy electrons in oncology.

eBeam4Therapy is a 3-year project funded by the European Union aiming to to demonstrate the feasibility of laser-plasma technology in the radiotherapy application while paving the way for commercialisation and market entry.

The eBeam4Therapy project's consortium is made up of a research team from the Weizmann Institute of Science, led by Principal Investigator Prof. Dr. Victor Malka, and a commercialisation team from Acceler8 Limited.

AQLAS
Heikkilä and his team raised €2.5 million EIC-funded project AQLAS, launched in 2023.

AQLAS is a project funding via Horizon Europe programme EIC Transition that aims to produce an innovative, reliable, and lower-cost laser module with high precision for atomic quantum computers.

The AQLAS project's consortium is made up of teams from the Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica, SILENTSYS, Idil Fibres Optiques, and Acceler8 Limited.

BIOPURE
Heikkilä and his team raised over €2 million from the European Innovation Council for the technology development and commercialisation of BIOPURE.

The BIOPURE Project seeks to make the purification of monoclonal antibodies as simple and efficient as possible through an innovative technology that streamlines logistical chains and promotes sustainability by avoiding extensive use of chemicals.

The BIOPURE consortium is composed of a multidisciplinary group of internationally recognized biopharmaceutical experts and companies across three EU member states. These are as follows: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Università della Calabria, Crowdhelix, Seligenda, and Acceler8 Limited.

Other Roles

 * European Data Incubator (Proposal Evaluator, June 2019 - July 2019)
 * INNOWWIDE (Proposal Evaluator, June 2019 - July 2019)
 * Eureka Eurostars (Proposal Evaluator, October 2019 - present)
 * Innovation Fund Denmark (Proposal Evaluator, October 2019 - present)
 * Research Promotion Foundation Cyprus (Proposal Evaluator, November 2019 - December 2019)
 * The Malta Council for Science and Technology (Service Provider via Acceler8 Limited, 2021 - present)
 * We Make Future (Jury Member, June 2023)
 * EIC Women Leadership Programme (Mentor, June 2023)
 * EIC Partnership Programme (Active Partner via Acceler8 Limited, June 2023 - present)
 * Scale Up with Wolves & European CVC Awards (Jury Member, March 2024)

Education
Heikkilä's achievements in postgraduate education date back to 1994, when he started studying for a Master's degree at the University of Oulu. After a year of studies there, he changed to studying Electrical and Electronics Engineering at the Helsinki University of Technology.

After obtaining his Master's degree from the Helsinki University of Technology, the Acceler8 Limited CEO started his postgraduate business studies at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and the McCombs School of Business within the University of Texas at Austin.

Personal Life
Heikkilä lives with his partner, Angele Giuliano, and her son in Hamrun. He has two sons, Patrick and Alex, from his first marriage.