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Fedoroff Named Rice’s S&T Adviser; Keegan Joins Seahorse Board; Schaefer Tapped to Head MdBio; and Others

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) - Nina Fedoroff, a former member of Sigma-Aldrich’s board of directors and a Penn State University professor, has been named science and technology adviser to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Fedoroff was nominated for the post by the National Academy of Sciences. Fedoroff resigned from her spot on Sigma-Aldrich’s board of directors. Fedoroff is chair of the life sciences and an Evan Pugh professor at Penn State.
 

Seahorse Bioscience, a developer of cellular analysis tools, has appointed Joseph Keegan to its board of directors. Keegan was previously CEO of Molecular Devices. Prior to that, he was president of worldwide tissue culture at Becton Dickinson and vice president of Leica’s microscopy and scientific instruments division.
 

The Tech Council of Maryland has tapped Richard Zakour to be executive director of MdBio and the MdBio Foundation. Zakour was formerly general manager of Fisher BioSciences and previously was in management at Mckesson Clinical Services, DynCorp and Cambridge Biotech. Zakour was a member of TCM’s board of directors between 2003 until early 2007 and he served on MdBio Foundation’s board as well.
 

Xceleron this week said it has appointed Joel Schaefer to be senior director of business development. Schaefer held the same title at MDS Pharma, and he has worked for the past four years providing development support in the European, Asian, and North American biotech and pharmaceutical markets. Schaefer also has worked at Otsuka, Johnson & Johnson, and at Boehringer-Ingelheim.
 

Acrongenomics has named Dimitri Goundis to the post of CEO, which Goundis will assume in September. Goundis has worked in research and in clinical research at Hoffman La Roche, and was at the start-up companies The Medicines Company and at Speedel, a Swiss biopharmaceutical company.
 

London Genetics has formed a seven-member scientific advisory board. Mark Caulfield, a professor of clinical pharmacology at Queen Mary, University of London, will serve as chair of the SAB.
 
Other members of London Genetics’ SAB include: Tim Aitman, Clinical and Molecular Genetics, Imperial College London; Alan Ashworth, of the Institute of Cancer Research; Aroon Hingorani of University College, LondonEllen Solomon of  King’s College London; Brendan Wren of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; Nick Carter of St George’s, University of London; and Shirley Hodgson of St George’s, University of London.
 

Promoted? Changing jobs? GenomeWeb wants to know. E-mail [email protected] to appear in PEOPLE, a weekly roundup of industry comings and goings.

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