NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Direct-to-consumer genetic testing firm 23andMe has appointed Andy Page as its president, a newly created post. Page, who has served as a member of 23andMe's board of directors for the past year, will report to CEO and co-founder Anne Wojcicki.
Page's role as president began June 12. He was previously president of the Gilt Groupe, an online luxury shopping website, and chief operating and financial officer at PlayPhone. In his new position at 23andMe, Page will be in charge of the firm's product and engineering, marketing, finance, business development, laboratory operations, and legal/regulatory affairs functions. He will also identify long-term growth opportunities for 23andMe.
In appointing Page, Wojcicki reiterated the company's previously stated goal to garner one million customers by the end of the year. The company has lowered the price of its testing services to $99 hoping to attract a more diverse customer base.
Wojcicki will focus on 23andMe's research organization and management activities. She and Page will work together on the company's business strategy. Page will remain a board member.
Exact Sciences' Senior VP and Chief International Officer Laura Stoltenberg has resigned from the company, according to an SEC filing. Under a separation agreement, Stoltenberg will receive 12 months' severance at her base salary, a $100,000 guaranteed bonus, and 100,000 restricted stock units. Also under the agreement, Stoltenberg will provide consulting services for a payment of $120,000.
Marcia Nizzari has been named vice president of engineering at PatientsLikeMe. She joins the company from Good Start Genetics, where she was the director of bioinformatics and high performance computing/IT. Previously, she was director of informatics for the Program in Medical and Population Genetics at the Broad Institute.
Mollie Roth, former COO of the personalized medicine consultancy Diaceutics, has launched her own personalized medicine and life sciences consulting firm, PGx Consulting. Roth, an attorney by training, will provide a variety of services to the life sciences industry in the areas of strategic planning, operations, companion diagnostic contract negotiation, sales and marketing, legal, IT and network support, and SEO optimization
Rheonix has named Frank Gill as its vice president of manufacturing. Gill will oversee manufacturing of Rheonix instrument platforms, reagent kits, and the Rheonix CARD system, the firm said.
Most recently, Gill was director, reagent manufacturing operations at Roche 454 Life Sciences. He also held similar positions at Immunicon, now part of Veridex, and Songbird Hearing.
The University at Buffalo has appointed Peter Elkin professor and founding chair of its new biomedical informatics department. He will begin his new role this summer.
Previously, Elkin served as vice president and professor of medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine where he also directed the institution's center for biomedical informatics. He has also held an academic appointment in informatics at Mayo Clinic's medical school and completed an NIH-sponsored fellowship in medical informatics at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University.
BioTime has appointed former Gen-Probe CEO and Chairman Hank Nordhoff to serve on its board of directors. BioTime is a regenerative medicine and stem cell biotech firm that provides a range of stem cell lines, hydrogels, culture media, and differentiation kits.
Sequenom's stockholders have re-elected its board of directors to serve until the company's next annual meeting, in 2014. The board includes Ernst-Günter Afting; Kenneth Buechler; John Fazio; Harry Hixson; Myla Lai-Goldman; Richard Lerner; Ronald Lindsay; David Pendarvis; and Charles Slacik.
Genomic Health's shareholders on June 6 re-elected the company's board of directors to continue serving until the company's 2014 annual meeting. The re-elected members include Kimberly Popovits; Felix Baker; Julian Baker; Fred Cohen; Samuel Colella; Ginger Graham; Randall Livingston; and Woodrow Myers.
Fluidigm has re-elected Samuel Colella and Gajus Worthington to serve as class III directors until the firm's 2016 stockholder meeting.
Colella, who is a managing director of Versant Ventures, has been a member and chairman of the company's board since 2000.
Worthington is the company's president, CEO, and Co-Founder, and he has been a director since the firm launched in 1999.
The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council has appointed Carol Goble to serve on its council and has reappointed sitting members David Baulcombe and Jim Godfrey to continue on the council. Goble's appointment will run through March 2017, and Godfrey and Baulcombe's terms will run through 2015 and 2016, respectively.
Goble is a professor of computer science at the University of Manchester who has developed biological data technologies, such as ontology-based systems for data and model curation. She is deputy director of the UK's node of the European e-Infrastructure for Life Sciences, known as ELIXIR.
Certara has tapped Yuichi Sugiyama, a professor in the University of Tokyo's graduate school of pharmaceutical sciences and laboratory leader at RIKEN, to serve on its scientific advisory board.
The company hopes to benefit from Sugiyama's expertise in transport mediated drug disposition and physiologically-based pharmacokinetic modeling and simulation.
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.