Complete Genomics has appointed Keith Raffel as chief commercial officer and Jill Hagenkord as chief medical officer.
Raffel will focus on identifying new growth opportunities for the company, including using cloud computing and software tools to deliver information to customers. Raffel was the founder and chairman of cloud-computing firm UpShot. He holds a bachelor's degree from Harvard College, a master's degree from the University of Oxford, and a JD from Harvard Law School.
Hagenkord is charged with expanding Complete Genomics' sequencing services into the translational medicine market and for use by customers in clinical diagnostic development. She joins Complete Genomics from iKaryos Diagnostics, a cancer diagnostics company, and from Creighton University, where she was an associate professor and director of molecular pathology and clinical genomics. Previously, she was a pathologist at Deltagen. She holds an MD from Stanford University School of Medicine and did residency training in pathology at the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of Iowa. She also did fellowships in pathology and oncology informatics and molecular genetic pathology at the University of Pittsburgh.
The American Chemical Society has given George Trainor a Heroes in Chemistry award for his work in developing the fluorescence-tagged terminator strategy for next-generation sequencing, which was eventually licensed to Applied Biosystems. He developed the method for reading DNA while in the central research department at DuPont. Trainor is currently a consultant for Trainor Consulting. Previously, he served as a vice president for Bristol-Myers Squibb in oncology chemistry and early discovery chemistry, as the executive director for DuPont Pharmaceutical in medicinal chemistry, and as associate director at DuPont. He holds a BS in chemistry from the Stevens Institute of Technology and an MS and PhD in chemistry from Harvard University.
Edison Liu has been named the president and CEO of the Jackson Laboratory, replacing Rick Woychik, who stepped down in January. Liu will begin his position in January 2012. Liu has been the founding executive director of the Genome Institute of Singapore since 2001. Previously, he was the scientific director of the National Cancer Institute's division of clinical sciences. In his new position, Liu will expand the lab's use of genomics in using mice to understand human disease, as well as expand the lab's services to customers in Asia and Europe.