NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Agilent Technologies has named Lars Holmkvist as a senior vice president and president of its Diagnostics and Genomics group. Holmkvist was president and CEO of diagnostic developer Dako, which Agilent acquired in June. He joined Dako from Applied Biosystems, and previously was at Medtronic Vascular and Cardiac Surgery.
Pacific Biosciences said this week that Stanford University Professor Lucy Shapiro has joined the firm's board of directors. Shapiro is director of the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine at Stanford's School of Medicine, and she is a co-founder and director of Anacor Pharmaceuticals.
Genetic Technologies has appointed Mark Ostrowski to be senior VP of sales and marketing for molecular diagnostics. He will manage US sales efforts for the firm's BrevaGen product.
Ostrowski has 20 years of experience in diagnostics, including serving as director of sales operations at Myriad Genetics and as director of managed care services at Dianon Systems.
Reagents provider Enzymatics has named Jonathan DiVincenzo to be its president and CEO. DiVincenzo formerly was president of Millipore's Bioscience Division, and he spent 18 years at the company in a range of other posts, including VP of global sales and service and VP of marketing and R&D. Before Millipore, DiVincenzo spent time at Orion Research, now part of Thermo Fisher Scientific, as a product manager and technical support engineer, and at General Electric in thermodynamics engineering.
Cambridge University Professor David Baulcombe has been named a winner of the Balzan Prize, which carries with it an award of CHF 750,000 ($800,000), for his efforts to add to the understanding of epigenetics and its role in cell and tissue development under normal and stressful conditions.
Illumina has named Paul Bianchi as its senior vice president of human resources. In his new role, Bianchi will oversee Illumina's global HR strategy and will manage the San Diego firm's office in Hayward, Calif.
Bianchi joins Illumina from Risk Management Solutions, where he was senior vice president of human resources. He has 20 years of experience at various companies.
BG Medicine said this week that it has appointed Howard Rosen to be VP of sales and marketing and Thomas Mortensen to be VP of European sales and marketing. Rosen formerly was director of Boston Scientific's cardiovascular service line franchise and Mortensen was VP of market development in Europe for Circulite and an international marketing director for EV3.
In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, BG Medicine also said that Chief Commercial Officer Stephen Miller's contract has been terminated, but he will continue to serve as a consultant with the company on an interim basis.
Jay Keasling has been named a winner of the 2012 Heinz Award, a recognition from the Heinz Family Foundation that carries with it a $250,000 cash prize, for his use of synthetic biology to engineer microbes for manufacturing an antimalarial drug and for use as biofuels.
Keasling is associate lab director at the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, CEO for DOE's Joint BioEnergy Institute, director of the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center, and a professor of biochemical engineering at the University of California Berkeley.
Transgenomic said this week that it has appointed Mark Colonnese executive vice president and chief financial officer.
Colonnese most recently served as executive vice president of commercial operations and CFO at Salutria Pharmaceuticals. Prior to that, he was executive vice president of commercial operations at AtheroGenics. He has also held finance-related positions at Medaphis, Applied Analytical Industries, and Schering-Plough.
HTG Molecular Diagnostics has hired Vijay Modur as VP of translational science and chief medical officer. Modur recently was global head of diagnostic discovery at Novartis Molecular Diagnostics, and he also was a senior director at Novartis Molecular Diagnostics and an associate director at Merck Research Laboratories.
Enzo Biochem said this week that Dov Perlysky has been elected to serve on its board of directors. Perlysky has been a member of the board of directors at Pharma-Bio Serv since 2004, a managing member of the private investment firm Nesher, LLC since 2000, and a VP at Laidlaw Global Securities.
Promoted? Changing jobs? GenomeWeb wants to know. E-mail [email protected] to appear in People In The News, a weekly roundup of industry comings and goings.