Dr. Robert Macsics is Co-Founder and CEO of smartbax GmbH, a Munich-based biotech company pioneering next-generation antibiotics to combat the global crisis of multi-drug resistant bacteria.

Robert holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the Technical University of Munich, an MSc in Pharmacology from the University of Oxford, and an MBA from the College des Ingenieurs; his Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds-funded doctoral research on novel antibiotic mechanisms of action directly seeded the founding of smartbax.

Robert co-founded smartbax in April 2021 alongside Prof. Dr. Stephan Sieber and Marco Janezic, transforming years of academic research at TUM into a commercial biotech venture at a time when few large pharma companies were investing in antibiotic innovation.

He oversees all scientific and business development, fundraising, and investor relations at smartbax, having secured backing from leading life sciences investors including Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund, High-Tech Grunderfonds, Bayern Kapital, and UnternehmerTUM.

smartbax has raised over 6.6M EUR in total funding, won the prestigious Falling Walls Foundation Venture competition, and is advancing a proprietary pipeline of small-molecule antibiotics targeting MRSA and VRE, pathogens responsible for 1.3 million deaths annually worldwide.