NEW YORK, Jan. 14 (GenomeWeb News) - Alnoor Shivji, Victor Joseph, and Amjad Huda have founded WaferGen, a Fremont, Calif., high-throughput screening and cell-based assay company, the company said today.
Shivji, the chairman of WaferGen, has founded three communications that were sold to Ciena, Cisco, and Redback Networks, the company said. Additional information on the other co-founders was not available.
WaferGen is commercializing microwell plates with microfabricated silicon wafers in each plate that enable users to individually control the reactions in the plate and detect changes in conditions, according to a company statement.
Gail Page has been appointed president of Ciphergen's new Diagnostics Division, and as executive vice president of Ciphergen Biosystems; while Martin Verhoef has been promoted to president of the Ciphergen Biosystems Division, the company announced this week.
Page comes to Ciphergen from Luminex, where she was executive vice president and chief operating officer between 2000 and January 2003. Prior to joining Luminex, Page served in various management roles at Laboratory Corporation of America, which she joined in 1988. Before that, she held various positions "in the academic and diagnostic industry," the company said.
Verhoef joined Ciphergen in April 2000, and most recently held the position of senior vice president, sales, marketing, and operations. Prior to joining Ciphergen, he worked in Agilent Technologies' DNA microarray business, and prior to that, in their liquid chromatography division. He initially worked at Pharmacia LKB Biotechnology AB, in the Netherlands and in Sweden.
Robert Pinco has joined the advisory council at CyGene Laboratories, a Coral Springs, Fla company that designs genetic profiling and diagnostic testing methods, the company said Jan. 13. Pinco currently co-chairs the BioMedical/FDA practice and the biotechnology group at the law firm Buchanan Ingersoll, in Washington, DC.
Pinco was formerly director of the over-the-counter drug review at the FDA, as well as an associate White House Counsel, and served in positions at the Drug Enforcement Administration and the US Attorney's Office.
Sass Somekh has joined the board of directors at Nanosys, of Palo Alto, Calif., the company said Jan. 13. Somekh is the former executive vice president and board member of Applied Materials, and the co-inventor of the company's Precision 5000 semiconductor manufacturing system. He is also currently a director at Synopsys. Nanosys develops nanotechnology for applications in the chemical and biological sensor arena, macroelectronics, and other areas.
Gerald Casilli has resigned from the board of directors of Cepheid, on which he has served for eight years, the company said Jan. 13. He was chairman and CEO of IKOS systems between 1989 and 1995, and chairman of the board through 2002. Prior to that, he was general partner of Genesis Capital between 1982 and 1990, and the founder of Millennium Systems, which made microprocessor development systems, in 1973. He is also a director at Internet performance company Keynote Systems and software firm Decisis.
Stephen Blose has been appointed to the board of directors at BioMicro Systems of Salt Lake City, the microfluidics company said Jan. 13.
Blose has previously served as division general manager of imaging products at Bio-Rad Laboratories, and prior to that, as CEO of Protein Databases, a service provider in proteomics. Earlier, he was a senior scientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory where he worked with James Watson.
Frank Karbe has been appointed chief financial officer at Exelixis, the company said Jan. 12. Karbe comes to Exelixis from Goldman Sachs, where he was most recently vice president in the healthcare group. Before that, he was in the finance department of Royal Dutch/Shell Group in Europe.
Andrew Morffew has been appointed CEO of the Automation Partnership, replacing founder Richard Archer, who will step down in February, the company said Jan. 12.
Morffew comes to the Automation Partnership, of Cambridge, UK, from Parexel International, where he was president of the consulting group. Before joining Paraxel, he was leader of the European Pharmaceutical and Process Industries practice at IBM, where he spent 18 years.
Archer, who is retiring, will continue to work as a consultant for the Automation Partnership, the company said.
Noel Doheny has been named vice president, solutions for molecular diagnostics at Qiagen, the company said Jan. 12. He will work out of Qiagen's Maryland headquarters, and will be a member of the company's executive committee.
Doheny comes to Qiagen from ThermoBioStar, which was acquired by ThermoElectron in 1998. Until the acquisition, Doheny was the president of the company. After the acquisition, he was director of strategic planning and business development.
Scott Clarke has been appointed president and CEO of Discovery Innovations, a new web-based informatics spinoff of BioSpace, where he was president and CEO. He was previously Chief Information Officer at Incyte, and worked for 11 years at Syntex, where he was also CIO; as well as at 3com, where he was vice president of management information services.
Other Discovery Innovations executives include Beth Kennedy, executive vice president, who formerly worked as an IT manager at Incyte, at Syntex, and at Silicon Graphics; Adam Kurland, the chief technologist, who was at Incyte, LifeScan, Oracle, and Syntex; Sandra Pace, senior director of client business management, who was previously at senior account manager at Incyte; and Jin Kim, director of business development, who was director of strategic alliances Asia Pacific for Akamai Technologies, and managed the LifeTools and LifeSeq databases at Incyte.