Our leadership

Kamila co-founded Frontiers with the vision to make research openly and widely available for the benefit of humanity.

Kamila obtained a MSc in Psychology from the Technical University Berlin and completed her Master’s thesis at the Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research, Germany in 2003. She obtained an award-winning PhD degree in Neuroscience at the EPFL, Switzerland. During her postdoctoral studies at the EPFL she co-developed the 'Intense World Theory of Autism', which proposes that autism results from a 'super-brain' that perceives, absorbs, and feels too much – causing autistic people to withdraw from an overly intense world. The theory resonated beyond the research community, featuring in popular science magazines and documentaries, and published as a book, The boy who felt too much, in 2018.

Kamila was named a L’HEBDO Forum 100 personality, a finalist for the 2016 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur Award and the 2017 EU Prize for Women Innovators, and a Special Prize Winner at the Vaud International Business Awards in 2021.

Julian joined Frontiers in May 2023 and serves as President and Chief Business Officer. In this role he is the deputy to the CEO and is responsible for the overall strategy of Frontiers, the implementation of the annual strategic plan, the overall business model including expansion into new segments, and the group organizational structure.

Before joining Frontiers, Julian spent 12 years with Holtzbrinck Publishing Group in various roles including Executive Vice President Group Strategy, CEO of Holtzbrinck Digital, and Chairman of Digital Science. He started his career as a strategy consultant and investment banker before moving into the media/publishing space. He is an alumnus of WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management.

Giovanni is Frontiers’ Chief Financial Officer, overseeing financial and accounts operations. He joined Frontiers in 2009 and has held various business support roles, including planning, operations, and leading the people team.

Holding a Master’s degree in business administration, Giovanni has an extensive, global career in multiple sectors, including equity market trading at Euromobiliare SIM, software product development at Stockpoint Inc and more recently, board member and financial auditor at the Project Management Institute Switzerland Chapter.

Fred supervises the entire Frontiers journal portfolio and is directly involved in all strategic projects. He served as publishing consultant during Frontiers’ launch phase in 2006–2008, rejoining in 2013 in his current role. An active advocate for open science, Fred frequently organizes and participates in a variety of advocacy events and roundtables.

Fred earned a PhD in Chemistry from Harvard and continued his research on atmospheric compounds at the CNRS in France and EPFL in Switzerland. He moved into academic publishing in 1997, first overseeing a portfolio of journals, book series and major reference works at Elsevier Science and then founding FontisMedia – a publishing technology startup that developed the first multi-language content-management platform for scientific journals. He was also technology advisor for the launch of an institutional document repository (InfoScience) and consulted for the founding of the English-language EPFL Press.

Kanika Suri Mehra, Chief People Officer, joined Frontiers in September 2022 and oversees all aspects of human resources strategy at Frontiers, including talent acquisition, employee engagement, leadership development and compensation and benefits.

Kanika has more than eighteen years’ experience leading human resources for global organizations, including over 11 years at Amazon, where she led the Amazon Web Services (AWS) HR Partners, supporting the hypergrowth in 30+ countries across Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). In addition, she established Amazon's HR Shared Services in Prague, supporting 28,000 EMEA employees. Prior to that, Kanika had successful HR career tenures at Citibank in New York and Microsoft in Seattle. Kanika has a Master’s degree in Industrial Relations and Human Resources from Pennsylvania State University, USA.

Chantelle leads a team of marketing, communications and public relations experts working to disseminate research and support Frontiers’ mission to ensure we all live healthy lives on a healthy planet. She joined Frontiers in 2010 and held various positions in Product Development, Strategy and Communications. She managed the launch of the Frontiers Community Platform, the Frontiers Research Network and Loop, before taking over the Marketing and Communications department in 2017.

With a background in arts and education, Chantelle spent several years as a secondary school teacher in London, UK, before joining Illumina Digital – an award-winning multi-platform production company where she was the creative lead in the conception, development and delivery of online educational resources for clients including the BBC, the Diploma Support Program and the Learning and Skills Improvement Service.

Parul oversees internal processes and implementing the operational model, including governance, organization, policies, procedures, and optimization.

She joined Frontiers in 2023 after more than 23 years leading business change, transformation, customer experience and culture shift in fast paced and high growth environments. She was the Group Head of Operational Excellence at the London Stock Exchange Group, driving business process transformation and organizational effectiveness. She has also held successful leadership tenures at GSK, Expedia, UCB Pharmaceuticals, eBay, and General Electric.

She is passionate about diversity and inclusion and creating collaborative working cultures supporting children and women in STEAM.

Mehmet is Frontiers' Chief Legal Officer, leading the team that oversees legal and compliance affairs. He joined Frontiers in 2022 to support international growth and development plans.

As a specialist in corporate and commercial law for high-tech matters, Mehmet is regularly called on to give talks on legal issues facing high-growth companies at the cutting edge of technologies, including artificial intelligence, blockchain and smart contracts for the EPFL Center for Digital Trust, MassChallenge Switzerland, and the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.

Daniel is responsible for technology at Frontiers. This includes the development and launch of innovative new digital tools and services for researchers, as well as operational tools that enable Frontiers staff to provide a great service. He joined Frontiers’ Product Management team in 2013, which he has led since 2015. In 2020 he was appointed Chief Technology Officer and leads the Product, Engineering, and IT Infrastructure teams.

Daniel's background is in computer science, where he started his career as a software developer before gradually moving into product management. He is a passionate user-experience evangelist with expertise in cloud-based platforms and customer-centric development methodologies.

Henry co-founded Frontiers with the goal to accelerate science by making publishing open and technologically efficient.

Henry is a professor of neuroscience at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). He is also the founder of the EPFL’s Brain Mind Institute, founder and director of the Blue Brain Project – a Swiss Brain Initiative to simulate the brain – and the founder of the Human Brain Project, a Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Flagship initiative of the European Commission, awarding €1 Billion over 10 years to develop future neuroscience, future medicine and future computing. Henry has published over 150 research articles and received numerous awards and honours, including the Bell Labs Claude Shannon Visionary Award and the International Hebb Award.

Kamila co-founded Frontiers with the vision to make research openly and widely available for the benefit of humanity.

Kamila obtained a MSc in Psychology from the Technical University Berlin and completed her Master’s thesis at the Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research, Germany in 2003. She obtained an award-winning PhD degree in Neuroscience at the EPFL, Switzerland. During her postdoctoral studies at the EPFL she co-developed the 'Intense World Theory of Autism', which proposes that autism results from a 'super-brain' that perceives, absorbs, and feels too much – causing autistic people to withdraw from an overly intense world. The theory resonated beyond the research community, featuring in popular science magazines and documentaries, and published as a book, The boy who felt too much, in 2018. She was named a L’HEBDO Forum 100 personality, a finalist for the 2016 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur Award and the 2017 EU Prize for Women Innovators, and a Special Prize Winner at the Vaud International Business Awards in 2021.

Steve is Founder and Co- Chairman of CVC Capital Partners, one of the world’s largest private equity and investment advisory firms, and Deputy Chairman of CVC’s Europe/North America and Asia Pacific Private Equity Boards. He served as Executive Officer at Citibank International (1980–1987) and is or has been a member of a number of supervisory boards including Evonik Industries (2008–2016), AHT Cooling Systems, Elster Group and Flint Group.

Stefan is the CEO of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, which is the parent of Springer Nature, Digital Science, Macmillan, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Picador, S. Fischer Verlage and DIE ZEIT. The company also owns stakes in funds and shares in over 300 internet companies around the world including HV Capital, Insight Partners, GSV Education, Amboss, Flixbus etc.

Stefan's main interests are trust in the age of polarization and artificial intelligence, in education as the basis for more global equity, and in supporting the culture of reading. He holds a PhD in media law from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Bavaria and has held positions at Bloomsbury, Kirch and other companies before leading the Nature Publishing Group and, since 2001, the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group.

Stefan is Co-Founder and Chairman of the Max-Planck-Foundation, Vice-Chairman of the American Academy in Berlin and Founder and Chairman of the Kinderstiftung Stuttgart. He sits on the Advisory Board of the Goethe Institut.