NEW YORK, April 10 - NimbleGen Systems said on yesterday that it had hired Steven Smith as vice president of bioinformatics and Albrecht Frauendorf as senior director of DNA array manufacturing.
Smith previously ran an independent bioinformatics consulting firm, Genesmith Informatics. Before that he was manager of R&D at Genetics Computer Group, where he led the development of the Wisconsin Sequence Analysis Package.
Frauendorf was most recently at Protogene, which manufactures DNA microarrays. As director of the company's DNA microarray operations, he was responsible for technical manufacturing and scale-up.
NimbleGen, a privately held company, seeks to improve and shorten the microarray manufacturing process. It is based in Madison, Wis.
Qiagen said on Monday that it has hired Byron Hewett as senior vice president for sales and marketing and general manager of Qiagen, Inc.
Hewett will have responsibility for the company's North American sales and marketing operations. These markets represent more than 50 percent of Qiagen's consolidated net sales, the company said.
Most recently, Hewett was vice president of worldwide marketing for Bayer's laboratory testing business unit, where he directed global strategic development as well as development and commercialization of new products. Before that he was head of Bayer's US Laboratory Testing and Nucleic Acid Diagnostics businesses.
CuraGen added Bayer's David Ebsworth and Northeast Utilities' John Forsgren to its board of directors, the company said on April 4.
The firm also said that HSB CEO Richard Booth has left the board but will continue to advise the company.
Ebsworth is the former president and general manager for Bayer's pharmaceutical business. He has more than 22 years of experience in the industry.
Forsgren is chief financial officer and vice chairman of the board of Northeast Utilities, a power company and energy trader. He was previously managing director of corporate finance at Chase Manhattan Bank, and senior vice president and chief financial officer of Euro Disney.
New Zealand biotech firm Genesis Research and Development Corporation said on April 3 that it had hired Nathan Bach as vice president of business development.
Bach will lead the company's plant-sciences activities in North America and will be based in California. He will seek licensing agreements in agricultural and life-sciences biotech.
Bach was previously the director of west coast business development for Integrated Genomics.
Genesis, based in Auckland, develops products using its microbial, plant, and mammalian EST databases. Its Plant Sciences division focuses on cell signaling genes, and claims to have the world's largest EST database of commercially valuable tree species.
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