Meet the LifeScience ORG CEO
Wim Vos - radiomics.bio
What called you to lead?
Leadership didn’t come from a grand plan—it all began with a chance coffee break.
I was an aerospace engineer by training, working on my thesis in the basement of my university—a typical windowless room. I went upstairs to grab a coffee and, as I reached the entrance, I recognised a guy from my year walking out. On an impulse, I ran after him to catch up and we started chatting.
He’d just defended his thesis and told me he and his father planned to start a company to simulate airflow in the lungs. That caught my attention because, during my internship, I worked on simulating airflow in the nose. Before I knew it, he asked me, “Do you want to join?”
If I’d been five seconds later for that coffee, my life would have turned out completely differently.
At the time, I had plans to go to Italy and open a restaurant serving Belgian beer and Belgian-Italian fusion food. But instead, I said “Yes!”, and that’s how I ended up at FLUIDDA.
I stayed there for over 14 years, learning a lot about the typical ups and downs that you experience in a start-up environment. At the end of 2018, I decided it was time to move on. I was consulting for a few months, helping companies with strategic decisions, when out of nowhere, I got a call from a recruiter about a CEO position in Liege.
At first, it did not feel like the next thing I wanted to engage myself in as the company was still very much transitioning out of academia and searching for where to go. But they asked me to share some advice on what kind of CEO they should look for, which I gladly did based on my previous experience.
A few days later, the recruiter came back, telling me that the team liked my ideas and wanted to meet me. After some discussions, I realised that the strategic vision I had developed over the years lined up perfectly with what they needed. I hadn’t planned to take the role, but they made a great offer so I took the plunge and joined the company that would become radiomics.bio.
Wim’s full profile is available for our members inside the community.