Sigma Awards Bonuses; Mansoor Mohammed Joins CombiMatrix; Sirna Names Scientific Advisors; and Others

Mansoor Mohammed joined CombiMatrix as chief scientific officer and director, the company said yesterday.

Mohammed studied clinical cytogenetics at the Universityof California, Los Angeles and at Baylor College of Medicine, where he directed research and development of Spectral Genomics. He comes to Combimatrix from Quest Diagnostics, where he was director of advanced technologies. He serves as ambassador of sciences to the Toronto Genome Center.

Sirna Therapeutics named 10 new advisors to its scientific advisory board yesterday. They are Jeffrey Bluestone, Beverly Davidson, Donald Ganem, Joe Gray, StanleyLemon, Richard Locksley, Jerrold Olefsky, David Russell, Xiaodong Wang, and James Wells.

Bluestone is a professor of medicine, pathology, microbiology and immunology at the Universityof California, San Francisco, where he is also the director of the diabetes center. He is the director of the Immune Tolerance Network and the JuvenileDiabetesResearchFoundationCollaborativeCenterfor Cellular Therapy.

Davidson is a professor of internal medicine, neurology, physiology and biophysics at the Universityof Iowa.

Ganem is a professor of microbiology/immunology and medicine at UCSF and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

Gray is associate laboratory director for life and environmental sciences at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the director of the LBNL life sciences division. He is an adjunct professor at UCSF.

Lemon is director of the Institute for Human Infections and Immunity and a professor in the microbiology and immunology and internal medicine departments at Universityof Texas.

Locksley is a professor of medicine and microbiology/immunology at UCSF and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

Olefsky is professor of medicine and co-chair of the division of endocrinology and metabolism at UCSF.

Russell holds a distinguished chair in molecular genetics at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. He is an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Wang holds a distinguished chair in biomedical science at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. He is an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Wells is a professor of pharmaceutical sciences and chemistry and molecular pharmacology at UCSF.

Renato Paro was named professor for biosystems at ETH in Zurich, Switzerlandand will be a founding director of the Center of Biosystems Science and Engineering, ETH said last week.

The C-BSSE will have 15 professorships in different disciplines of life sciences, engineering and informatics and will integrate research activities of ETH Zurich, Universityof Basel and Universityof Zurich, according to the statement.

Paro is a director of Zentrum f r Molekulare Biologie der Universität Heidelberg in Germany.

Jenny Graves was selected Asia-Pacific laureate of the L'oreal-Unesco 2006 awards for Women in Science, presented in Paristwo weeks ago.

Gravesis the head of the comparative genomics research group at the Research School of Biological Sciences at the Australian National University. She is the director of the ARC Centre for Kangaroo Genomics at ANU and the Universityof Melbourne.

Sigma-Aldrich announced cash bonuses for 2005 on Monday.

David Harvey, chairman receives $584,000.

Michael Hogan, chief financial officer, receives $260,000.

David Julien, president of research specialties, receives $188,000.

Jai Nagarkatti, president and CEO, receives $341,000.

Franklin Wicks, president, SAFC, receives $194,000.