NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute has elected Gregory Lucier to be chairman of its board of directors. Lucier will take over the post from M. Wainwright Fishburn, who will remain a member of the board.
Lucier is CEO and chairman of Life Technologies. He also served on Sanford-Burnham's Board of Trustees from 2005 until 2011.
Roche has nominated Christoph Franz to be chairman of the board of directors. He will succeed Franz Humer, who previously announced that he would not stand for re-election. Franz will not renew his contract as CEO of Lufthansa Group, which expires on May 31, 2014.
Prometheus Laboratories has tapped Lisa Miller to be its new CEO.
Miller most recently was corporate VP at Dako, which Agilent Technologies acquired in 2012, where she handled global operations for its cancer diagnostics business. She also previously served as VP of commercial business and head of the Americas region at Invitrogen, and she held several senior sales and account management posts at Thermo Fisher Scientific.
Dietrich Stephan has been named chair of the department of human genetics at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health and will also serve as the associate director of the Institute for Personalized Medicine, a collaborative initiative between the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences and UPMC.
Stephan was most recently founder, president, and CEO of Silicon Valley Biosystems.
Complete Genomics has appointed Ethan Knowlden senior vice president, general counsel, and secretary.
He joins the company from Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, where he was vice president of business development and licensing, and corporate counsel.
Personalis, a provider of genetic sequencing and data interpretation to researchers and clinicians, this week formed a UK subsidiary and appointed Mark Dronsfield as the director of European sales.
In a statement, Personalis said it plans to build services infrastructure and a European commercial team that will address the exome and genome analysis needs of researchers in overseas markets. Dronsfield was previously the head of commercial operations in Europe for RainDance Technologies and has worked in commercial operations for Illumina, Affymetrix, and Life Technologies.
Genomic Health's board of directors has elected Henry Fuchs to take a seat on the board. Fuchs has been executive VP and chief medical officer of BioMarin Pharmaceutical for over four years, and he previously held various posts with a range of responsibilities at Ardea Biosciences, Onyx Pharmaceuticals, and Genentech.
Vermillion has appointed Eric Varma to serve on its board of directors. Varma, a physician, is a partner at Oracle Investment Management, which is Vermillion's largest shareholder. He also formerly worked at Leerink Swann, the Boston Consulting Group, and the US Food and Drug Administration.
The St. Jude Children's Research Hospital said this week that its CEO and Director, William Evans, plans to retire from his executive post in July 2014.
Evans, whose expertise is in pharmacogenomics, has been with St. Jude for over 40 years, and he has been its CEO for the past decade. Under his leadership, the hospital invested heavily in whole-genome sequencing of childhood cancers, St. Jude said.
Evans plans to continue to lead his research lab at St. Jude after he retires from the executive spot.
The hospital's board of governors will conduct an international search to find Evans' successor.
Agricultural trait development firm Cibus global said this week that it has appointed Keith Walker to be its CEO, while continuing to serve as its president, a position he has held since he helped to found the firm in 2001.
Walker has over 40 years of experience in the agricultural biotech sector. He formerly held a range of management positions at Mycogen and Agrigenetics, he founded the company Plant Genetics, and he worked in research at Monsanto.
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