Vizgen: Seth Benson, Sara Mackey
Seth Benson has been named CFO and Sara Mackey VP of marketing at spatial genomics firm Vizgen.
Benson previously led the global finance organization at Invaio Sciences. Prior to that, he held a leadership role at Akoya Biosciences. Further, he worked at Accenture, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanely. He holds a BS in biology from Duke University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management.
Mackey used to be VP of biopharma and corporate strategy at Advanced Instruments. Earlier, she was director of product marketing at Cell Signaling Technology, product portfolio director of drug discovery and development at PerkinElmer, and she held various marketing leadership roles at Thermo Fisher Scientific. She holds a BSc in biomedical science and pharmacology from the University of Bradford.
BioSkryb Genomics: Ram Laxman, Reagan Tully
Ram Laxman has been appointed as chief commercial officer of BioSkryb Genomics. He replaces Reagan Tully, who has assumed the role of chief business officer at the company. Laxman joins BioSkryb from 10x Genomics, where he was president and general manager for APAC. Before that, he was part of the early commercial teams at Illumina and Pacific Biosciences. He holds a PhD in molecular biology from the University of California, Berkeley.
Deepcell: Amirali Kia
Deepcell, a Menlo Park, California-based cell biology research tools company, has appointed Amirali Kia as VP of data science and AI. Amirali was formerly VP of AI and computational biology at Harbinger Health. He has also served as director of the Core-AI team at Illumina. He holds a PhD in high-performance computing and its applications in computational biology from Stanford University.
CellChorus: Andrew Last
CellChorus, a Houston-based cellular analysis firm, has appointed Andrew Last to its board of directors. Last is currently executive VP and chief operating officer of Bio-Rad Laboratories. He previously served as chief commercial officer for Berkeley Lights. Last has also held senior positions with Becton Dickinson, Applied Biosystems, Incyte Genomics, and Monsanto. He holds a PhD in agrochemical specialization and an MS in bio-aeronautics from Cranfield University in the UK.
Broken String Biosciences: Gavin Burns
Gavin Burns has been appointed as VP of quality and operations at Broken String Biosciences, a Cambridge, UK-based genomics company. He will help with the development of the firm's next-generation sequencing-based DNA break-mapping platform, Induce-seq. Burns was previously associate director of quality at Illumina. He also held senior quality and operational roles at several UK-based startups, most recently at Biocrucible. He holds a PhD in genomics from the British Antarctic Survey, a polar research institute, and from Gothenburg University in Sweden.
Element Biosciences: William Donnelly
William (Bill) Donnelly has been appointed to the board of directors of sequencing company Element Biosciences. Previously, he spent more than 20 years at instrumentation firm Mettler-Toledo International, including as executive VP and CFO.
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.