Josef Melcr | Thinker, technologist, scientist, team player.

About me

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions – Leonardo da Vinci

I am a scientist who became a technology, business and product leader. I enjoy working across science, technology, business and operations to turn ideas to reality.

After my scientific career in several institutes and countries, I founded Protyon and acted as CEO during its first year. Later I moved into the CPTO role, where I could focus on what I enjoy most: technology, product strategy, and making things work in practice.

I like staying proactive and taking on challenges that involve creative work and growth. That is why I enjoy continuous learning and applying a scientific mindset to all areas, from software and technology to team leadership and business.

Core strengths

  • Leadership of cross-functional projects and teams in science-, technology-, and operations-heavy environments
  • Stakeholder alignment across technical, scientific, business, regulatory and clinical
  • Agile project planning with OKRs and Scrum mitigating risks with high delivery cadence
  • Evidence-based decision making and problem solving through analytical thinking in science, business, operations and project coordination
  • Translating technical and regulatory complexity into clear plans, requirements, actions and reports
  • Hands-on experience with software development, data science, AI, ML operations, cloud administration, and scientific research.
  • Scientific talks, business pitches, storytelling with data and reporting to stakeholders

Skills

  • Leadership: C-level startup management, Professional Scrum Master, Scrum Product Owner, Agile Product Operating Model, project coordination, stakeholder communication, startup pitching, events networking, presentation, team coaching, mentoring.
  • Project management: OKR planning, agile, roadmaps, requirements, risk analysis, classical milestones and deliverables, budgets, RACI matrix.
  • Business and Operations: Product strategy and business development, compliance implementation (QMS, RMS, ISMS), remote team operations, onboarding and offboarding, grants and resource acquisition, tech documentation.
  • Communication: Business presentations, scientific talks, management reporting, stakeholder coordination, grant writing, poster and flyer preparation, academic writing.
  • Scientific: Correlating experiments with data and computer models, independent leadership of own projects, model training and development, protein-ligand interaction, Molecular dynamics simulations, biomolecular modeling, statistical analysis.
  • Collaboration tools: Jira, Trello, Monday, Miro, GitLab, GitHub, Slack, G-Suite, Formwork.
  • Software: IT security and access administration, Azure and DigitalOcean administration, Azure Foundry, Databricks, openAI API, Linux, Python, Fortran, Bash, Git, Jupyter, scientific scripting, Cloud computing, Docker, HPC, GPU accelerators.

Experience and Education

Chief Product Technology Officer (CPTO) at Protyon | 2023 - Present

Protyon is a startup company in the Netherlands that offers clinical decision support software for hospital clinicians and their cancer patients, www.protyon.tech.

  • Acted as the Head of product and technology, defined product and roadmap, aligned with business development, estimated commercial aspects like COGS and CAC, designed cloud architecture and software stack to meet clinical and regulatory requirements.
  • Led product and technology development with cross-functional teams from concept to delivery across software, machine learning, cloud infrastructure, clinical research, and regulatory work.
  • Coordinated project timelines, budgets, and external contributors while keeping priorities aligned with business goals.
  • Set up business processes, quarterly OKRs, management cadence, remote work practices, onboarding, IT administration, and access/security controls.
  • Led the tech team as Scrum Master and Product Owner, conduncted regular retrospectives, facilitated timely delivery aligned with business needs, technical priorities, and team health.
  • Developed core analytical routines hand-on and oversaw implementation of molecular modeling pipelines.
  • Led clinical validation activities and ensured alignment with EU Medical Device Regulation and IT security requirements.
  • Contributed to fundraising, grant acquisition, consortia proposal writing and planning resources.
Achievements
  • Started the company, built its technology, its operating structure, and set the foundations of the business.
  • Shaped a product and a service that is well accepted by the clinical community, clinically validated and compliant with regulations.
  • Ran a successful clinical study with results accepted as a good standard by the oncology community.
  • Presented the product and clinical results at ESMO 2025 and generated new contacts and client leads.
  • Introduced Scrum rituals, retrospectives, sprint plannings, software development life cycle practices, and implemented Agile product operation mode.
  • Trained the tech team in agile methodologies, Scrum, team coaching and mentoring, employee onboarding/offboarding.
  • Expanded the modeling portfolio with additional diseases and new technology from research.
  • Created a functioning remote work culture with documentation-first operating style.
  • Implemented a RACI matrix for the remote-first work setup to bring clarity to project management and problem ownership.
  • Contributed to scientific publications and analysis around the technology and its clinical application.
  • Wrote the technical materials and received a patent on Protyon technology as its inventor (P195739NL00).
  • Supported regulatory documentation for MDR and the software architecture needed for CE-marking readiness.
  • Established structure for quality and regulatory management (QMS and RMS) in the production environment.
  • Contributed to grant acquisition and resource setup, including WBSO, MIT, and cloud credits. Attracted more than 1M€ in funding with presentations and pitches.
  • Regularly reported to management, partners, clinicians, and investors through talks, pitches, and structured updates.
  • Represented company at international events and programmes (SLUSH, Creative Destruction Lab, Academic Startup Competition, ESMO)

Founder & Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at Protyon | 2022 - 2023

  • Founded the company and led it through its first year, establishing the business and product vision, proof-of-principle solution, and initial funding and operations.
  • Led investor-facing pitches and external communication with partners and stakeholders.
  • Helped shape the operating model and management structure for a startup working at the intersection of science, software, and regulated healthcare delivery.

Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Groningen (Computational Biophysics, group of S. J. Marrink) | Oct 2018 - Dec 2021

  • Led a scientific project using molecular dynamics simulations of cell membranes to support bioproduction in a consortium setting with academic and private partners (MeMBRane).
  • Developed simulation pipelines for analysis of large simulation datasets and force-field topology manipulation to correlate with lab experiments.
  • Supervised Ph.D. and Master’s students and lectured on Molecular Design.
  • Coordinated the Lipid Task Force for development of the next version of Martini lipids, including project setup, event organization, research coordination, and design decisions.
  • Links: research group of Siewert-Jan Marrink, University of Groningen.

Ph.D. Researcher jointly at IOCB Prague, Max Planck Research School Dresden, and Charles University | Sep 2013 - Nov 2018

  • Thesis: Simulation of processes in cellular membranes.
  • Research: Developed analysis methodology for linear dichroism microscopy analysis, orchestrated large scale molecular simulations on HPC resources and developed scripts for their analysis, key research role in highly-collaborative open-science research project NMRlipids. Awarded several grants on computing time (Curie-HN France via PRACE, FZ Juelich Germany).
  • Built a strong foundation in evidence-based decision making, critical thinking, structured analysis, and clear scientific communication.
  • Extra training: Parallel programming (F95) and utilization of parallel architectures such as GPUs, multi-core processors, and supercomputers.
  • Links: research group of prof. Jungwirth

Extra activities, Conferences and Talks

  • ASC pitch competition (March 2026)
    • Startup five minute pitch for Protyon’s vision and potential of its companion diagnostics platform.
  • Academic startup competition 2026
    • Pitch: represented Protyon, one of the selected Dutch academic startups
  • Pitch training from best3minutes by David Beckett
  • ESMO Congress 2025 (Berlin, Germany, Nov 2025)
    • Poster Presentation: Presented clinical trial results using Protyon’s proprietary molecular modeling technology for personalized cancer treatment. The clinical trial is a success and the results from the Protyon technology attracted new client leads.
  • Creative Destruction Lab program for startups
    • Company presentation and networking: I wrote application to participate in this programme and represented Protyon in its events collecting several business leads.
  • Training and project leadership of software students within UniCo-RUG collaboration
  • Masterclass on MDR and IVDR by Wouter van Beek
  • Venture Lab Weekend event
    • pitch competition and business ideation: Our team ideated on a business idea and won 2nd prize in pitch competition
  • ICBL 2021 (Utrecht, Netherlands Oct 2021)
    • Contributed Talk: International Conference on the Bioscience of Lipids. Presented research on membrane permeability and lipid dynamics in yeast cells.
  • Dutch Molecular Dynamics Day (Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 2019)
    • Invited Lecture: Discussed advanced simulation methods and electronic polarization in biomolecular systems.
  • CECAM Workshop: Frontiers in Computational Biophysics (Lugano, Switzerland, Jan 2018)
    • Contributed Talk: Discussed conformational dynamics of complex lipid mixtures relevant to biology.