Werner Bauer, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Nestl? S.A. will retire on 31 August 2013 after a long and distinguished career of 23 years with Nestl?. The Board of Directors has appointed Stefan Catsicas, currently Provost and Executive Vice President of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia, to succeed Werner Bauer as Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Nestl? S.A., effective 1 September 2013.
Stefan Catsicas, a Swiss citizen of Italian and Greek origin, holds a PhD in Natural Sciences from the University of Lausanne and completed his post-doctoral studies at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, U.S.A. He started his career at the pharmaceutical company Glaxo in Geneva as Head of Neurobiology at the company?s Institute of Molecular Biology. He continued his career in academia at the University of Lausanne as Professor and Chairman of the Cell Biology Institute, and later as Vice-President Research and Professor of Cellular Engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). In 2005 he co-founded a private group of biotechnology companies and he returned to academia in 2011 as Provost and Executive Vice President of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Stefan Catsicas has a strong R&D background, in both business and academia.
Paul Bulcke, CEO of Nestl?, said: ?Werner Bauer shaped Nestl??s R&D capabilities for more than 20 years and laid the scientific foundations for our innovation-driven approach to Nutrition, Health and Wellness. He created a global R&D network and was also instrumental in paving the way for our future activities in the area of health science. I am confident that Stefan Catsicas will further strengthen this drive across many scientific fields. Bringing together his extensive experience in academia, open innovation and business Stefan Catsicas has the right competences to reinforce and advance our unmatched R&D capabilities and bring them to new levels of achievement.?