Fisher Scientific president and chief operating officer, David T. Della Penta will retire at the end of 2006, the company said today.
Succession plans will be announced later this year, Fisher said. Until that time, he will continue to be responsible for all of the company's operating activities.
Fisher named Della Penta as president and COO in April 1998.
Allen McClay, chairman and founder of Almac Sciences, was knighted for his services to both business and charity, Almac Diagnostics said today.
McClay founded Galen Ltd, which became Galen Holdings Plc. When he retired from Galen Holdings in 2001, he invested approximately £240 million ($423 million) to buy CSS, CTS, ICTI and PDMS from Galen to establish Almac Sciences (under Almac Diagnostics).
McClay has donated almost £20 million ($35 million) through the McClay Trust for research at Queen's University Belfast.
Gene Logic named Suzanne Mullins as vice-president of quality systems and regulatory compilance and Tracey McNamara as a veterinary pathologist for the nonclinical services division, the company said today.
Mullins has held leadership positions in quality systems and regulatory compliance with Astra Zeneca, Astra Merck, Glaxo Research Institute, and Shire Pharmaceuticals.
Previously the head of the department of pathology at New York's Bronx Zoo, McNamara identified the West Nile virus outbreak in 1999 and worked on the vaccine.
Tony Galindo joined SciGene as director of product manufacturing, SciGene said yesterday.
Galindo comes to SciGene after nearly 20 years at Agilent (Hewlett-Packard) where he held various senior manufacturing management positions within the Life Sciences and Chemical Analysis Group.
Barbara Handelin joined DNAPrint Pharmaceuticals, the newly organized subsidiary of DNAPrint Genomics, as director of diagnostics, the company said yesterday.
Since 1987, Handelin was director of the DNA Diagnostics Laboratory at Integrated Genetics (now Genzyme Genetics).
She earned her Ph.D. at the Oregon Health Sciences University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The National Human Genome Research Institute named the husband-and-wife scientific team, Joan E. Bailey-Wilson and Alexander F. Wilson, as co-chiefs of its Inherited Disease Research Branch, the agency said yesterday.
Currently, Bailey-Wilson heads Statistical Genetics and Wilson heads Genometrics at Inherited Disease Research, one of the seven research branches in NHGRI's Division of Intramural Research.
Wilson and Bailey-Wilson received their B.A. degrees from McDaniel College and Ph.D degrees in medical genetics from Indiana University Medical Center in Indianapolis.
Eric Neumann joined Teranode as senior director of product strategy, the company said earlier this week.
With 20 years of experience in bioinformatics and semantic technologies development, Neumann has held executive positions with Sanofi-Aventis Pharmaceuticals, Beyond Genomics, NetGenics, Bolt, Beranek, and Newman.
Ian Campbell joined Akubio as the business development director, the company announced earlier this week.
Until recently, Campbell was a business development consultant of The Automation Partnership. Prior to this, he spent three years in business development at Corning Microarray Technology and two years in commercial roles within Biacore AB manufacturers.
He holds a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology.
Robin Toft has joined the board of directors at Innovative Biosensors, the company announced earlier this week.
Toft was formerly the senior vice-president of commercial operations at Roche Molecular Systems and vice-president of sales and marketing at ViroLogic (now known as Monogram Biosciences) prior to that. At Laboratory Corporation of America, she was the head of marketing, sales, and business development for company's Center for Molecular Biology and Pathology.
C. Thomas Caskey is the new director and CEO-elect of the Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine for the Prevention of Human Diseases, the University of Texas said late last week.
Caskey has been an adjunct professor and an original member of the institute's Scientific Advisory Board since 2004.
Caskey was founding director of Houston-based Cogene Biotech Ventures and Cogene Ventures, venture capital funds supporting early-stage biotechnology and life sciences companies. He was senior vice-president for human genetics and vaccines discovery at Merck Research Laboratories from 1994 to 2000 and president of the Merck Genome Research Institute from 1998 to 2000.
Caskey earned his medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine and his undergraduate degree from the University of South Carolina. He serves as an adjunct professor in the Department of Molecular & Human Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine.
Part of the university's Health Science Center at Houston, the institute will also retain Nobel Laureate Ferid Murad as director and Irma Gigli as deputy director.
Amicus Therapeutics appointed David Lockhart as chief scientific officer, the company announced late last week.
Lockhart most recently was president and chief scientific officer of Ambit Biosciences in San Diego, Calif. He was the director of genomics at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation.
As vice-president of genomics research, he was the primary developer of DNA arrays for genome-wide gene expression profiling at Affymetrix.
Lockhart received his Ph.D. in chemistry from Stanford University and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Whitehead Institute at MIT under Peter S. Kim.
VizX Labs announced promotions in its management team earlier this week.
N. Eric Olson, the scientific director, was promoted to vice-president and chief science officer. Jeff Kozlowski, the senior software engineer, became director of GeneSifter development.
Olson joined VizX Labs in 2001 when the company merged with Neobase, a bioinformatics company he and Kozlowski founded. Prior to Neobase, Olson worked as a researcher at the University of Washington, where he earned his Ph.D. in pathology and B.Sc. in biology.
Kozlowski came to VizX with Olson. Prior to Neobase, he worked in the Department of Pathology at the University of Washington for 10 years. He earned a B.S. in biochemistry from the University of Washington.
David Audley, the director of sales, is now vice-president of sales.
Audley joined VizX in May 2005 to oversee sales of GeneSifter. He was director of business development and marketing with Memetic Systems and vice-president of business development at Exem. He holds a B.A. from Willamette University and a M.A. from Portland State University, where he also completed his coursework for a Ph.D.
The company also restructured the GeneSifter sales team, shuffling the account manager Anna Boone into the Eastern Region sales manager. Monika Kovacs joined the team as the Western Region sales manager.
Boone joined VizX in August 2005 from Gian DeCaro Sartoria, where she worked as Executive and Sales Assistant. She received her B. Sc. in biology from Seattle University.
Kovacs worked as a research scientist at Harborview Medical Center prior to joining VizX. She holds a B.S. in physical and biological sciences from Evergreen State College.
Xenomics named David Robbins as vice-president of product development to accelerate the commercialization of non-invasive technology based on Transrenal-DNA, the company said last week.
Robbins led the development and FDA approval of Abbott Diagnostic's Hepatitis A line of diagnostic products. He oversaw SmithKline's molecular diagnostic laboratory.
He holds a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Texas at Austin.