Stephan has about 25 years pharmacological R&D experience. He studied biochemistry and cell biology at the Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands and holds a PhD degree from the faculty of Medicine of the University of Amsterdam. After a short post doc period for a Dutch biotech company (IntroGene) at the Center for Transgene Technology & Gene Therapy at the University of Leuven (Belgium) he went back to the University of Amsterdam. For about 10 years Stephan was assistant professor and principal investigator pharmacology at the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam, working on the pharmacology and pathophysiology of sphingolipids. Here he was involved in biochemical pharmacology and translational research in a variety of therapeutic areas (cardiovascular, CNS, metabolic and urology). From 2014-2019 he was professor of Life Sciences at Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Eindhoven, the Netherlands. He has published more than 60 scientific papers in peer reviewed scientific journals.

In the past 15 years Stephan was involved in drug development within biotech industry. Amongst others, he was interim CEO of Mirabilis Therapeutics (Maastricht, the Netherlands), and CSO of Okklo Life Sciences. Until February 2025 he was Director Business Development at Brightlands Maastricht Health Campus (Maastricht University, the Netherlands).

Stephan was also founder and CSO of Alveron Pharma where he developed a universal anticoagulant reversal agent (of which he was co-inventor) through a successful phase 1 clinical study.