Optics11 Life just made a performance-defining move. The company has appointed Jacquelien ten Dam as CEO, a leader with the commercial discipline, sector fluency, and scaling experience needed to turn mechanobiology into a global industrial standard. For a company already operating at the front edge of life sciences instrumentation, this marks the start of a faster, more focused growth phase.
Jacquelien brings a rare blend of strategic and operational depth: capital-markets insight from Van Lanschot Kempen, high-tempo scale-up execution from Picnic, and hands-on commercialization experience from MIMETAS, one of the pioneers in organ-on-a-chip technology. She understands how enabling technologies mature into essential infrastructure, and how disciplined commercial execution accelerates that journey.
Mechanobiology is entering its inflection point. As pharma and biotech scale their adoption of New Alternative Methods (NAMs), the ability to measure stiffness, elasticity, and contractility in near-physiological environments becomes a core requirement. Optics11 Life sits at the center of that shift. Its nanoindentation and muscle contractility platforms give global pharma, biotech, and academic labs the mechanical insights needed to interrogate disease progression, assess drug response, and advance next-generation 3D in vitro models.
With Jacquelien at the helm, Optics11 Life is positioned to expand its footprint in key markets, deepen strategic partnerships, and define the commercial blueprint for the mechanobiology category.
“Europe’s industrial tech is converging fast; advanced instrumentation, automation, and real-world biological relevance are becoming one. Optics11 Life shows what that future looks like. It takes a complex scientific field and turns it into a scalable commercial product. This is the kind of shift Europe needs to stay competitive in biotech and life-science engineering.”
- Robin van Boxsel, Partner at FORWARD.one
Mechanobiology is becoming a foundational layer in modern drug discovery. As the industry shifts toward more predictive, human-relevant testing environments, mechanical data is emerging as a missing link; the component that connects cellular behavior with real physiological outcomes. Companies that can deliver this insight with precision and reproducibility are shaping new scientific standards.
For FORWARD.one, this appointment reinforces the thesis we back: technical depth matched with commercial leadership outperforms. The companies that win are the ones that turn breakthrough instruments into indispensable workflows.
We follow performance, not plans.
