Phalanx Hires Chief Scientist, Operations Director; Robert Gasparini New CSO of NeoGenomics; Thomas Higgins Joins Caliper Life Sciences as CFO; and Others

Charles Ma has become chief scientist of Phalanx Biotech Group, and George Jokhadze director of operations of PhalanxBio, the group's USsubsidiary, the Taiwan-based microarray company said earlier this month. Jokhadze was previously a senior research scientist and group leader at BD Clontech, where he co-developed microarrays. He holds a PhD in molecular biology from the Academyof Sciences in Russia. Ma has been an associate research scientist at ColumbiaUniversitysince 1995. He holds a PhD in molecular biology from the Universityof California, Los Angeles.

Robert Gasparini has been appointed as CSO and president of NeoGenomics, effective Jan. 3, the Fort Myers, Fla.-based company said yesterday. He also joins NeoGenomics' board of directors. Gasparini, who has been the company's acting CSO since August, was previously the director of the genetics division for US Pathology Labs. He holds a master of health science in laboratory management from QuinnipiacUniversity and a BS in biological sciences from the Universityof Connecticut.  

Thomas Higgins has become CFO and executive vice president of Caliper Life Sciences, the company said last week. His appointment will become effective in early January. Higgins currently is executive vice president of operations and CFO of VI Technologies. He holds a BBA from BostonUniversity.

Christohper Yoo will become director of marketing of the molecular biology division of Applied Biosystems starting in January, GenomeWeb News has learned. He joins ABI from IBM's Information Based Medicine unit, where he was head of strategy. Yoo holds a PhD in molecular and cell biology from Yale University School of Medicine and a BA from the Universityof Pennsylvania.

Kenneth Bate will leave Millennium Pharmaceuticals, where he is head of commercial operations and an executive vice president, in January, the company said on Monday. His responsibilities will be taken over by CEO Mark Levin. Millennium is currently looking for a successor. In addition, three board members, Ginger Graham, CEO of Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Vaughn Kailian, managing partner of Deerhaven Partners, and Edward Miller, CEO and dean of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, will step down in January.

Bernd Thiede has been hired as head of a proteomics group of the Norway-based BiotechnologyCenterof Oslo, BiO said last month. He will start his appointment in the spring of 2005. Thiede is currently a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin. He holds a PhD in protein chemistry from the Max Delbr ck Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlinand an MSc in chemistry from the Universityof Hamburg.

Kyle Kolaja has been promoted to vice president of chemogenomics, and Gene Napolitano to vice president of project management and operations of Iconix Pharmaceuticals, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company said yesterday. Kolaja was previously director of chemogenomics and toxicology at the company. He received a PhD in toxicology from IndianaUniversityand a BS in physiology/science and technical studies from Michigan State University. Napolitano has been a director of Iconix since earlier this year. He holds a PhD in pharmacology from New York University School of Medicine and a BA in biology and German from the State Universityof New Yorkat Binghamton.

The International Society for Computational Biology has announced its officers for the term beginning Jan. 21: Burkhard Rost of Columbia University and Barbara Bryant of Millennium Pharmaceuticals have been elected as vice presidents; Toni Kazic of the University of Missouri, Columbia, as secretary; and David Rocke of the University of California, Davis, as treasurer. Michael Gribskov of PurdueUniversitywill serve his second term as president. In addition, several new members were elected to the ISCB board: Kevin Karplus of the University of California, Santa Cruz; Janet Kelso of the South African National Bioinformatics Institute; Thomas Lengauer of the Max-Planck Institute for Informatics; Reinhard Schneider of EMBL; Terry Speed of the University of California, Berkeley; Tan Tin Wee of the National University of Singapore; Alfonso Valencia of the Instituto Nacional de Bioinformatica; and Lisa Vawter of Aventis Pharma.

Amit Kumar, CEO and president of CombiMatrix, has been appointed to the board of the NanoBusiness Alliance, an industry association, CombiMatrix's parent company Acacia Research said on Monday.

William Haseltine has joined the board of directors of the Institute for OneWorld Health, the non-profit company said last week. He was the CEO and chairman of Human Genome Sciences until this fall. Haseltine holds a PhD in biophysics from HarvardUniversity and an undergraduate degree in physical chemistry from the Universityof Californiaat Berkeley.

Scott Lockard has joined ForteBio, formerly Aria Biosystems, as vice president of engineering, a new position, the company said earlier this month. Lockard previously was vice president of engineering at Cell Biosciences. Before that he worked for Molecular Dynamics and Amersham Biosciences. He holds an MBA from Santa ClaraUniversityand a BS in mechanical engineering from Virginia Tech.