Petra Szeszula

Dr. Petra Szeszula is a biotech entrepreneur and scientist trained at the Karolinska Institute, one of the world’s leading medical research institutions and home of the Nobel Assembly in Physiology or Medicine. Her research in brain cancer revealed a critical bottleneck in neuroscience drug development—the lack of predictive human brain models—an insight that led to the founding of BrainZell. Petra leads company strategy, fundraising, and commercial development. She has raised €2.4M in early financing and built early partnerships with biotech and pharmaceutical companies. Under her leadership BrainZell has gained international recognition, including winning Techarena, one of Northern Europe’s largest startup competitions, and being selected as a Hello Tomorrow Deep Tech Pioneer and finalist in the Hello Tomorrow competition - a global deeptech summit showcasing the world’s most promising science-driven startups. With a background spanning deep scientific research, startup leadership, and venture fundraising, Petra drives BrainZell’s mission to transform drug discovery using human brain biology and AI.