BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Christer Wikner

Christer Wikner has worked in various positions within Amersham and General Electric Co. including product management and international launch of complex system products, and as Director Business Development/M&A and Head of Strategic Growth. He also has many years of experience as an entrepreneur in Clean tech, Digital solutions/SaaS and Sustainability. He has co-founded companies in different industries and led them to commercial success such as HPSolartech AB, Relation Desk AB and Valueguard Index Sweden AB. He holds an Executive MBA from Stockholm School of Economics, a B.Sc. in Chemistry from Uppsala University and a PhD in Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics from the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm.

Bo Karlsson

Βο Karlsson studied Mechanical Engineering at Linköping University and completed management courses in Oxford, England. Before Joining Metacon, Bo was a project manager at Alfred Nobel Science Park. Prior to this, he was four years at Sapa Profiler where he held various senior positions in business and production. Before his time at Sapa Profiler, he worked at ESAB AB for over 20 years, where he held various positions, initially within Design R&D and finally as Managing Director of ESAB Welding Equipment AB. He is also Deputy Board Member of Metacon Warrant AB.

Haris Makkas

Haris Makkas has over 40 years experience in international banking and investment management. A graduate of Brandeis and Columbia University, he was at Citibank headquarters in NYC for over 15 years before returning home to Greece to work for Bank of America, ING and Piraeus Bank. Most recently he was a board member of the National Bank of Greece and currently serves on the Investment Board of the Greek Recovery and Resilience Fund (RRF), part of the European RRF. He is an expert in capital markets and investment management and has extensive board experience.

Julia Berggren

Julia Berggren holds a double bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and Economics from Stockholm University and a diploma in Management Accounting from CIMA. Julia has over 10 years of experience in the business, finance and banking sectors and possesses many years of experience in financial modelling, reporting and project management.Prior to Metacon, Julia co-founded Water2H2, which Metacon acquired in 2021, where she was responsible for investment calculations to clients, such as LCOH and IRR. Julia is Managing Director and Board Member of Forest Peak AB and on the Board of Botnia Hydrogen AB.

Melissa Verykios

Melissa Verykios, General DG Research and Innovation, European Commission Chair of the Institution of the Clean Hydrogen Partnership, Member of the Board of Directors of Hydrogen Europe.

Melissa joined Helbio S.A. in 2017, to restructure Financing and Internal Operations of the company, after having followed a 10 year career in New York & London in Financial Institutions including HSBC Private Bank, between 2007-2017.

Melissa holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics & Business, Athens, Greece, and a MSc in Finance at the Barcelona School of Economics, Spain.

MANAGEMENT TEAM

Dr. Thomas Chalkidis

 Managing Director

Dr Chalkidis holds MEng, MSc and PhD degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Patras. His area of expertise is heterogeneous catalysis, reactor and process design, HazOp studies, and pollution abatement. He has experience in catalyst synthesis and characterization and mechanistic studies involving psysicochemical techniques such as X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), mass-spectrometry, gas chromatography, FTIR, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and BET. He has published a number of papers in international refereed journals and has made numerous presentations in international conferences.

Mr. Neoklis Tzinias  

Operations Manager

Mr Tzinias has experience and working background in the field of pressure vessels, steams boilers and RES. Satisfactory knowledge in industrial pressure vessels and steam boilers manufacturing and design according to specifications and standards. He joined the Helbio team in 2016. His area of expertise is energy systems design, heat transfer and steel vessel design.

Mr. George Nomikos 

R&D Manager  

Mr. George Nomikos holds a MEng degree in Chemical Engineering, a MSc degree in Energy and Environment and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Patras. His area of expertise is heterogeneous catalysis and catalytic reactors design, catalysts development etc. His main activities in the company are related to reactor and heat exchanger sizing, equipment sizing and procurement, unit field-testing, internal and EU project management. He joined Helbio’s team in 2013.