Linked In profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-pierre-de-muelenaere-40a63940/

Pierre De Muelenaere has an Electronic Engineering Degree and a PhD from the Université Catholique de Louvain.

He started the Belgian company IRIS in 1987, after receiving its Ph.D. in Applied Sciences from the Université Catholique de Louvain, and with the financial support of the Belgian holding company Ackermans & van Haaren.

The first product of the company Texiris 1.0 was a commercial version of the innovative Optical Character Recognition technology developed during its Ph.D.

Since then, Pierre has been leading IRIS through all its development steps from University Spin-off to the status of listed company (Nyse-Euronext).

More recently, in 2012 and 2013, he negotiated successfully the takeover of IRIS by Canon Group, which also resulted in the delisting of IRIS from the Nyse-Euronext Stock Exchange.

On September 1, 2015, Pierre has decided to leave IRIS for new projects with a focus on Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Education.

Pierre is a seed investor and Director of the Board since more than 20 years in the Belgian success story Pairi Daiza. He is also Director of the Board of Proximus, a leading Telecom operator and of Guberna, the Belgian Institute for Corporate Governance. Pierre was also a seed investor and Director of the Board of the Venture Fund E-Capital for more than 10 years.