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People in the News at Foresite Labs, DNAnexus, SeqOne Genomics, More

Foresite Labs: Mary Helen Black

Healthcare and data science incubator Foresite Labs has appointed Mary Helen Black as vice president and head of genomics. Black previously served as head of population analytics, computational sciences, at the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, a role in which she led J&J's partnership with the UK Biobank and other pharmaceutical companies to sequence half a million individuals. Black also previously served as a director and research scientist for Ambry Genetics and Kaiser Permanente, and taught biostatistics at California State University, Los Angeles for eight years as an adjunct professor. She holds a B.S. in biology and philosophy from Saint Mary's College, an M.S. in biostatistics from the University of Southern California, and a Ph.D. in statistical genetics and genetic epidemiology from USC.


DNAnexus: Jeff Margolis

DNAnexus has appointed Jeff Margolis to its board of directors. Margolis is currently a senior adviser for Blackstone. Margolis most recently served as chairman and CEO at Welltok, where he led the company from a pre-revenue startup to a leading enterprise consumer activation company. Before joining Welltok, he founded and spent 14 years as CEO and chairman of TriZetto, the first vertical SaaS enterprise software company. Margolis currently serves as chairman at NextGen Healthcare, vice chairman at TriNetX, and as a board member at Alignment Healthcare, Hydrogen Health, and Grin.


SeqOne Genomics: Michael Blum

SeqOne Genomics has hired Michael Blum as head of R&D. As such, he will lead scientific research and the creation of new genomic analysis technology for the French bioinformatics startup. Blum comes to SeqOne after nearly three years in R&D and data science at Owkin. He previously was a biostatistician and bioinformatician at France's National Center for Scientific Research, widely known as CNRS.


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.

The Scan

ChatGPT Does As Well As Humans Answering Genetics Questions, Study Finds

Researchers in the European Journal of Human Genetics had ChatGPT answer genetics-related questions, finding it was about 68 percent accurate, but sometimes gave different answers to the same question.

Sequencing Analysis Examines Gene Regulatory Networks of Honeybee Soldier, Forager Brains

Researchers in Nature Ecology & Evolution find gene regulatory network differences between soldiers and foragers, suggesting bees can take on either role.

Analysis of Ashkenazi Jewish Cohort Uncovers New Genetic Loci Linked to Alzheimer's Disease

The study in Alzheimer's & Dementia highlighted known genes, but also novel ones with biological ties to Alzheimer's disease.

Tara Pacific Expedition Project Team Finds High Diversity Within Coral Reef Microbiome

In papers appearing in Nature Communications and elsewhere, the team reports on findings from the two-year excursion examining coral reefs.