Pharma veteran George Poste, chairman of Orchid BioSciences and Structural Genomix, becomes director of the new Arizona Biodesign Institute, part of Arizona State University. The research facility will focus on using biotech, IT, and nanotechnology to find new ways of improving human health.
Aclara BioSciences continues tweaking its mission with a new hire: Michael Dunn, former executive VP for business development at ActivX Biosciences. Dunn will take on the new position of chief business officer for the Mountain View, Calif.-based company.
Simon Mercer heads to Gene Codes of Ann Arbor, Mich., as director of software engineering. He comes from previous work as director of the Canadian Bioinformatics Resource and a database development team leader at the Sanger Centre.
The Institute for Genomic Research hires Robert Strausberg, former director of NCI’s Cancer Genomics Office, as its vice president for research.
Kevin Ryan is the new president and CEO of Large Scale Biology, replacing founder Robert Erwin and John Fowler. Ryan was LSBC’s president from 1991 to 1995 and left to be CEO of contact lens manufacturer Wesley Jessen.
Formerly chief financial officer at Paris-based genomics firm Genset, John Varian is the new CFO at Deltagen.
Celera Genomics appoints Steven Ruben as its new veep for protein therapeutics. Ruben, who was last seen at Human Genome Sciences, will be responsible for work on discovering and validating new targets for therapeutics.
Matthew McGinniss, previously at Sequenom, moves to the Quest Diagnostics Nichols Institute as associate scientific director.
Tragically, leading Boston University bioethicist Dorothy Wertz died in a scuba-diving accident in Cancun, Mexico, during the Human Gene Mapping meeting in April.
Dynal Biotech announces the hiring of Erik Hornes as its CSO and VP of technology development. Hornes comes to Norway’s Dynal from Qiagen’s GenoVision unit.
DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory lures George Michaels from Monsanto to be its director of bioinformatics. Michaels, who also formerly worked at startup Genome Dynamics, will oversee PNNL’s bioinformatics and computational and systems biology efforts.
Exelixis bid adieu this month to its CFO and general counsel, Glen Sato, who becomes CFO at Protein Design Labs.