Rolf Apweiler and Ewan Birney will become associate directors of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory's European Bioinformatics Institute, succeeding Graham Cameron, who is retiring.
Apweiler and Birney have been jointly running a team since 2007 to develop public-domain protein and nucleotide databases and tools.
Apweiler joined EMBL in 1987 and leads EBI's contribution to the Gene Ontology. He holds a PhD from the University of Heidelberg.
Birney joined EBI in 2000 and is one of the founders of the Ensembl genome browser. He currently leads analysis for the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements project. He holds a PhD from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.
Alexander Barkas, a director on Complete Genomics' board, has passed away unexpectedly at age 64. Barkas was the founding CEO of Geron and Connetics. He also helped start and served on the board of directors of numerous biotechnology companies including Amicus, Geron, Novacept, SurgRx, Tercica, Topica Pharmaceuticals, Tinea, and other private companies.
He also started his own consulting business, BioBridge Associates, and cofounded venture capital firm Prospect Venture Partners.
Prior to becoming a venture capitalist, Barkas was a genetics researcher at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, the Whitehead Institute at MIT, and Duke University. He holds a BS from Brandeis University and a PhD from New York University.