Wouter Meuleman

Wouter obtained his undergraduate and Master's degrees in Chemistry from the University of Ghent, Belgium; a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Newcastle, UK; and an MBA from the University of Cambridge, UK. 

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Since departing his home country of Belgium for his doctoral studies, he has lived in Newcastle, Oxford, Cambridge, San Diego, and since 2016, in the San Francisco Bay Area together with his wife and two boys. In his spare time he enjoys running, playing the flute, reading, learning new languages (six and counting), and above all spending time with his family.

Wouter is a Partner at Illumina Ventures, an early stage life science-focused venture capital firm with offices in Foster City, CA and Dublin, Ireland. He was part of its founding team when the firm was spun out of Illumina, Inc (NASDAQ:ILMN) in 2016, where at the time he was Director of Corporate Development. He currently serves as a board director or observer at Fluent Biosciences, Ribometrix, Delfi Diagnostics, and Biota Bioscience. 

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A physical chemist by training, Wouter began his career in life sciences in 2003 as a founding employee at Oxford University spin-out Oxamer, co-founded by Lasker-award winner Prof. Sir Edwin Southern, which later became part of Oxford Gene Technologies and was ultimately acquired by Sysmex. In 2009, he joined Illumina, Inc. where, prior to moving into corporate development, he was Principal Scientist based in the Cambridge, UK office. There he helped incubate the MiSeq, which became one of the world's best selling next-generation DNA sequencing instruments.

As a member of Class 25, Wouter is serving his fellowship at Illumina Ventures under the mentorship of Paul Conley and Kim Kamdar.