Adela: Lisa Alderson
Minimal residual monitoring and early cancer detection firm Adela has appointed Lisa Alderson its CEO following a nationwide search. She has been the Foster City, California-based company's interim CEO since the middle of 2023 and has been on its board since 2022. Alderson previously founded Genome Medical where she was also its CEO. She also was Invitae's chief commercial officer and chief strategy officer and was part of the startup team at Genomic Health. Adela leverages a proprietary genome-wide methylome enrichment technology and plans to commercialize its first product, a tissue-agnostic test for MRD monitoring, in 2025.
Oxford Nanopore Technologies: Kathleen Barnes
Oxford Nanopore Technologies has appointed Kathleen Barnes as its new senior VP of population health and precision medicine. Prior to Oxford Nanopore, Barnes served as the senior VP for population health genomics at Tempus Labs. Before that, she was the founding director of the Colorado Center for Personalized Medicine and former head of the division of biomedical informatics and personalized medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Center.
Detect: Stefan Willemsen, Jeff Hawkins
Detect has added Stefan Willemsen and Jeff Hawkins to its board of directors. Willemsen most recently served as BioMérieux's president and CEO for the US and the Americas Region and led that firm's acquisition of BioFire. Hawkins is currently president and CEO of Quantum-Si and was previously president and CEO of Truvian.
Foundation Medicine: Dan Malarek
Roche subsidiary Foundation Medicine has appointed Dan Malarek as CEO replacing Brian Alexander, who will move to a senior leadership role in Roche's pharmaceutical research and development organization. Malarek has served in multiple roles within Roche Diagnostics, most recently as global head of marketing and customer insights. Before that, he served as general manager for Roche Diagnostics Norway.
Sphere Fluidics: Graeme Daniels
Graeme Daniels has been appointed as VP of sales and marketing at Sphere Fluidics. He joins the Cambridge, UK-based single-cell analysis firm from Revvity, where he was global sales leader of pharma services. Graeme holds a PhD in developmental biology from the University of Edinburgh and a BSc in molecular genetics in biotechnology from the University of Sussex.
Dxcover: Matthew Baker, Mark Hegarty, David Palmer
Dxcover, a Glasgow, Scotland-based diagnostics company specializing in liquid biopsy for early cancer detection, said that in January Cofounder Matthew Baker will be the new CEO, transitioning from his current role as chief technical officer. Current CEO Mark Hegarty is transitioning to the role of business advisor. Baker invented Dxcover's liquid biopsy platform and is also a professor of early diagnostics in the School of Medicine at the University of Central Lancashire.
Meanwhile, company Cofounder David Palmer will take over as chief technical officer, transitioning from his current role as chief data scientist. Palmer is also a reader in chemistry at the University of Strathclyde.
Invitae: Jill Frizzley
On Dec. 7, Invitae approved an increase in the size of its board to nine directors and appointed Jill Frizzley as its ninth and newest director. Frizzley is also a member of the Special Committee of the Board and currently serves as the president of independent consulting firm Wildrose Partners. In addition, she also serves as a director for Proterra and iMedia Brands. She previously served as counsel at the law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges and on the boards of directors for Virgin Orbit Holdings, Surgalign Holdings, Avaya Holdings, Hudson Technologies, and Vivus.
For additional recent items on executive appointments, promotions, and departures in the omics and molecular diagnostics space, please see the People in the News page on our website.