Personalis: Christopher Hall
Personalis has appointed Christopher Hall as its new CEO and as a member of the firm's board of directors, effective immediately. Hall joined Personalis in October 2022 and became president at the end of December 2022.
The company's board has also promoted Aaron Tachibana to chief operating officer. In addition to his previous role as Personalis' CFO, Tachibana had served as interim CEO starting at the end of December 2022. The firm also announced that it has promoted Richard Chen to the position of executive VP of R&D, in addition to his role as chief medical officer.
Hall has several decades of experience in the diagnostic space, previously serving as CEO of Naring Health, president and COO of Veracyte; and senior VP and chief business officer of Celera’s cardiovascular testing business. He holds an MBA from Harvard University and a B.A. from DePauw University.
Oncocyte: Joshua Riggs
Oncocyte has appointed Joshua Riggs as CEO effective Feb. 24, 2023. Riggs was named interim CEO in December, after serving as senior director of business development and general manager of transplant beginning in 2020. He also serves as president and joins the company's board of directors. Prior to joining Oncocyte, Riggs was a business development strategist with experience working with growth-stage molecular diagnostics companies. He has also served as a principal at Bethesda Group.
Guardant Health: Musa Tariq
Guardant Health has appointed Musa Tariq to its board of directors, effective March 6. Tariq is currently the chief marketing officer for GoFundMe. Prior to that, he was global head of marketing for Airbnb Experiences, and before that he was chief brand officer at Ford Motor Company. He has also held marketing leadership roles at Apple, Nike, and Burberry. Tariq currently serves as an adviser to MasterClass, the British Fashion Council, Felix Capital, and several other startups. He holds a B.S. in geography and economics from the London School of Economics.
Akoya Biosciences: Jennifer Kamocsay
Akoya Biosciences has appointed Jennifer Kamocsay as its general counsel. Kamocsay most recently served as the general counsel of Rubius Therapeutics, after working as the associate general counsel for Progress Software. Kamocsay holds a B.A. in history from the University of California, Los Angeles and a J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law.
Geneoscopy: Don Hardison
Don Hardison has been appointed to the board of directors of gastrointestinal disease diagnostics firm Geneoscopy after serving as a strategic adviser to the company for two years. He was president and CEO of Biotheranostics until it was acquired by Hologic in 2021. Before that, he was president, CEO, and director of Good Start Genetics, and prior to that, he was president and CEO of Exact Sciences.
Form Bio: Linda Murray
Linda Murray has been appointed as CFO of computational biology firm Form Bio, a spinoff from Colossal Biosciences. Previously, she was VP of financial planning and analysis at Cambridge Mobile Telematics. Murray holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Harvard University.
Prenetics: Scientific Advisory Board
Prenetics has formed a scientific advisory board made up of Tony Mok, Pasi Jänne, Pan-Chyr Yang, Hua-Chien Chen, Frank Ong, and Lawrence Tzang.
Mok will lead the board and is currently chairman of the department of clinical oncology at Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is also a nonexecutive director of AstraZeneca and an independent director of Hutchmed.
Jänne is a thoracic medical oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is also the director of the Lowe Center for Thoracic Oncology and the director of the Belfer Center for Applied Cancer Science, both at Dana-Farber.
Yang is a professor in the department of internal medicine at National Taiwan University College of Medicine and dean of the college. He was previously president of the university and has also served as the director of the Advisory Office for the Ministry of Education.
Chen is the cofounder and CSO of cancer genomics firm ACT Genomics. He was previously associate professor at Chang Gung University and an assistant investigator at the National Health Research Institute. Chen also served as biology director at pharmaceutical company TaiGen Biotechnology.
Ong is Prenetics' chief medical officer and interim CEO of ACT Genomics. Before Prenetics, he was CMO and CSO of Everly Health, and he has previously held leadership roles at Guardant Health, Illumina, and Roche.
Tzang is cofounder and CSO of Prenetics. He is a founding member and former secretary of the Hong Kong Society for Behavioural and Neural Genetics and a fellow of the Hong Kong Society for Molecular Diagnostic Sciences.
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.