Hillary Clinton Gets Award for UB Bioinformatics Support; David Murray Goes to Adjuvant; Robert Ellis new BioTrove COO; and Others

NEW YORK, June 4 - Hillary Rodham Clinton is not just making news this week for her tell-all book about the Clinton White House. On Friday, the New York Senator, along with New York Congressman Thomas Reynolds, will be honored with an Igniting Ideas award for supporting the University at Buffalo Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics, according to a university news service.

The awards are presented to business and civic leaders that have worked with UB to economically strengthen New York and in particular, the Buffalo Niagra area, the news service said.

The UB Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics is headed up by Jeffrey Skolnick, former director of computational and structural biology at the Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, and includes a 4,120 processor dell cluster in a 35,000-square-foot facility. New YorkState and private donors have pledged over $260 million to fund the center.

This ceremony coincides with the international Frontiers in Bioinformatics symposium that the UB Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics is holding June 6-8.

David Murray has been appointed president of Adjuvant, a life sciences management consultant firm, the Fairfax, Va., the firm announced today.

Murray, who will lead Adjuvant's life sciences consulting practice, comes to the company from Gene Logic, where he was senior vice president of sales, marketing, and business development.   He has also worked at D&B as executive vice president, and president of the Asia Pacific, Latin America business group.

Bruce Simmons has been named the new senior sales manager of SeqWright, a Houston company that performs sequencing and other related contract services for pharma and biotech companies, the company said June 3.

Simmons will oversee SeqWright's expansion pursuant to an agreement the company signed with Fisher Scientific for distribution of SeqWright's products and services.

Simmons was previously senior sales representative for Applied Biosystems.

Alex Mackenzie has been appointed vice president of research for Genome Canada, the organization said June 3.

Mackenzie, who will assume the post July 1, currently serves as director of the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute in Ottawa, and as a professor at Universityof Ottawa in the faculty of Medicine.

At Genome Canada, Mackenzie will be the organization's principal liason between government, academic, and industrial scientists.

Craig Venter, who is now president and chairman of the Center for the Advancement of Genomics, has been honored the EMC Information Leadership award, EMC said June 3.

Venter, who led genome sequencing efforts at Celera Genomics, was recognized for his innovative use of information technology in life sciences. Officials from EMC gave Venter the award at a ceremony Monday night.

EMC, a network storage giant, established the award two years ago to honor an individual or organization that exhibits "a sustained commitment to innovation through information."  Last year's recipient was Edward Johnson 3d, chairman and CEO of Fidelity Investments.

Venter is currently also president and chairman of the Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives and the J. Craig Venter Science Foundation.

Robert Ellis has been named chief operating officer of BioTrove, the Woburn, Mass. company said May 30.

Ellis comes to BioTrove from Affymetrix, where he was executive vice president. He previousy was president of microarray company Genometrix, and served in senior executive posts at Applied Biosystems, where he led marketing of the company's first automated sequencer, and PerkinElmer.

BioTrove focuses on microfluidics and nanofluidics devices for drug discovery.

Anne Pilaro has been appointed senior director of regulatory affairs at Gene Logic subsidiary TherImmune Research, the company said May 30.

TherImmune is a drug discovery, pre-clinical, and clinical trial contract research organization, which Gene Logic acquired in April for $52 million.

Pilaro comes to TherImmune from the FDA office of therapeutics research and review in the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER). Her work at FDA involved gene therapy, as well as review of products in multiple sclerosis, hepatitis and rheumatoid arthritis, Gene Logic said.

In the position, Pilaro will advise TherImmune clients on FDA regulatory policies and submissions.

Michael Draper has been appointed CFO of Transgenomic, amid a slew of management changes at the Omaha, Neb. mutation detection technology company.

Draper, who was previously controller at Transgenomic, succeeds interim CFO William Rasmussen.

Draper also worked for eight years at the audit group of Deloitte & Touche.

Rasmussen will stay at Transgenomic with responsibilities in strategic planning and human resources and administration.

Additonally, the company has announced the following management changes: Mitchell Murphy, Transgenomic's vice president, secretary, and treasurer, will be in charge of corporate governance and regulatory compliance; Ben Nouri will be in charge of marketing operations, along with his current responsibilities in global sales management; and Mario Noyer-Weidner will be in charge of biosystems R&D. In nucleic acids, Leo Beigelman will oversee chemistry R&D; and John Allbery will manage the company's nucleic acid synthesis in addition to other global manufacturing.

Transgenomic cut 80 staffers last December..