Dr. Olivier Menzel graduated (B.Sc.) from the University of Geneva, where he obtained a Master of Medical Genetics (M.Sc.) in 2001 and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology in 2006 from the University of Lausanne and EPFL at the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC). For seven years, he directed the laboratory of pediatric surgery at the University Hospital of Geneva. In parallel, he created the BLACKSWAN Foundation (blackswanfoundation.ch), a Swiss foundation to support research on orphan diseases, and he is the lead organizer/promoter of the bi-annual well-recognized international scientific conference of rare disease research (RE(ACT) Congress; react-congress.org). For two years, he was a director of a company specialized in the identification, acquisition, development, marketing, and sale of research programs for rare and orphan diseases. In 2013 he obtained an Executive MBA from the HEC of Lausanne with a specialization in Management Healthcare. He served as director at the second largest group of private clinics in Switzerland, Swiss Medical Network, then, for two years, he was the managing director and consultant at Think Rare Sàrl and fully involved in the BLACKSWAN Foundation activities. Now he is the Head of Strategic Partnerships at the Health 2030 Swiss Genome Center, a multi-institutional hub to promote genomic medicine.
Dr. Menzel sits on the board of the Swiss rare disease patient organization alliance (ProRaris), on the National Steering Board of the Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN), and he is a member of the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG).