Illumina: Scott Gottlieb, Keith Meister, Stephen MacMillan, Carissa Rollins
Illumina has elected Scott Gottlieb as its nonexecutive chair of the company's board. Gottlieb, who was the commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration from 2017 to 2019, has served on Illumina's board of directors since 2020. He is currently a partner at the venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. He also serves as a director of the publicly traded companies Pfizer and TempusAI and is a member of the executive committee of the board of the Mount Sinai Medical System.
Illumina has also appointed Keith Meister, founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of Corvex Management, to its board of directors, effective March 28, 2025.
Stephen MacMillan, chairman, president, and CEO of Hologic, who joined Illumina's board in June 2023, will retire in preparation for the company's upcoming annual meeting of shareholders. Illumina said MacMillan's resignation "is not the result of any dispute or disagreement with the company or the company's board of directors."
Additionally, Carissa Rollins, Illumina's chief information officer, notified Illumina that she will be retiring, effective April 11, 2025.
Pacific Biosciences: Jim Gibson
Jim Gibson has been appointed as CFO and principal financial officer of Pacific Biosciences, effective March 31. Christian Henry, who served as the firm's interim CFO and principal financial officer since December, will continue as president and CEO. Gibson was previously CFO of Sequoia Benefits and Insurance Services. Before that, he was CFO of Willow Innovations, and prior to that, VP of finance transformation at GoDaddy. He holds a B.A. in business economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Vizgen: Christian Uhrich and Chad Brown
Vizgen has named Christian Uhrich, investment director at M Ventures, to its board of directors. Uhrich joined M Ventures in 2019 from Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, where he led initiatives in strategy and operations across the healthcare and life science business sectors. A strategic corporate venture capital arm of Merck KGaA, M Ventures invested in Vizgen in late 2024 when the company completed its Series D equity financing.
In addition, Vizgen has named Chad Brown as its chief commercial officer. Prior to Vizgen, Brown was the senior VP of sales and marketing at NanoString Technologies. Before that, he was the president and head of commercial operations of North America at Qiagen.
New York Genome Center, Columbia University: Bing Ren, Tom Maniatis
Bing Ren has been appointed as scientific director and CEO of the New York Genome Center, effective April 14. He is succeeding Tom Maniatis, who is transitioning to the role of scientific director emeritus of the NYGC. Ren will also join Columbia University as a professor in the Departments of Genetics and Development, Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, and Systems Biology and as the associate director of the Roy and Diana Vagelos Institute for Basic Biomedical Science in the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. He comes to the NYGC and Columbia from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, where he was a professor of cellular and molecular medicine and the founding director of the Center for Epigenomics. Ren holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology from Harvard University.
ACMG: Mira Irons
The American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) appointed Mira Irons as its new president. For the last two years, she served as president-elect of the ACMG. Irons has also held positions on various committees within the ACMG, including the finance committee, the board of directors, the nominations committee, the foundation development committee, and the task force on medical genetics education, among others.
AACR: Keith Flaherty
Keith Flaherty has been elected as president-elect for 2025/2026 of the American Association for Cancer Research. He will take up his appointment next month during the AACR annual meeting and will assume the association's presidency in April 2026. Flaherty is director of clinical cancer research and chair of oncology at Mass General Cancer Center. He is also a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an associate member of the Broad Institute. He holds an undergraduate degree in neurobiology from Yale University and an M.D. from Johns Hopkins University.
Roche: André Hoffmann, Patrick Frost, Anita Hauser, Jemilah Mahmood, More
Roche's shareholders have approved the reelection of all members of the board who stood for election, including Severin Schwan, André Hoffmann, Jörg Duschmalé, Patrick Frost, Anita Hauser, Akiko Iwasaki, Richard Lifton, Jemilah Mahmood, Mark Schneider, and Claudia Suessmuth Dyckerhoff. Schwan, who previously served as Roche's CEO from 2008 to 2023, was re-elected as chairman of the board.
Hoffmann has been the vice-chairman of the board since 2006 and has served as a member since 1996. He previously served as special project manager at Nestlé UK.
Duschmalé is a fifth-generation descendant of Roche's founder and was a postdoctoral researcher in oligonucleotide chemistry at Roche from 2015 to 2018.
Frost has worked at life insurance company Swiss Life in Zurich since 2006, first as group chief information officer and then group CEO from 2014 to 2024. He previously served as the global head of fixed income investment at Winterthur Insurance.
Hauser is vice-chairwoman of the board of Bucher Industries. She was previously a managing director at Magenta Management and country manager and director at EF Education First.
Iwasaki is a professor of immunobiology and molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at Yale University. She is also an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a nonprofit medical research organization.
Lifton is currently the president and the head of the Laboratory of Human Genetics and Genomics at the Rockefeller University, as well as an adjunct professor of genetics and internal medicine at Yale University.
Mahmood is the executive director of Sunway Centre for Planetary Health at Sunway University. She was formerly the special adviser on public health to Malaysia's prime minister and the undersecretary general for partnerships at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
Schneider served as CEO of Nestlé from 2017 to 2024 and was previously CEO of the Fresenius Group, a German healthcare company.
Dyckerhoff is a senior external adviser for McKinsey & Company, which she has worked at since 1995. She has previously served in many roles, including as sector leader for Asia Health Services and Systems.
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.