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People In The News: Dec 13, 2013

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Waters' John Ornell plans to resign from his post as chief financial officer, effective Feb. 1, 2014, after which he will continue to serve the company as an advisor on a part-time basis.

Eugene Cassis, who currently is corporate VP of worldwide business development and investor relations, will step into the CFO role on an interim basis when Ornell leaves the position. Cassis has been with the company for 33 years and has an extensive background in the firm's financial, operational, and technical activities.


Bio-Rad Laboratories said this week that Robert Malchione has been appointed to its board of directors. Malchione will join the board at the beginning of 2014, and will stand for election along with the company's other directors at the annual meeting in April.

Malchione previously was senior VP of corporate strategy and technology at Avery Dennison, and before that he was VP, director, and partner at Boston Consulting Group.


Roche said this week that William Burns will not stand for re-election to the board of directors. The company also said that it has proposed that Christoph Franz be elected as chairman of the board, and the remaining members of the board should be re-elected.

The remaining board members include Andre Hoffman; Andreas Oeri; Pius Baschera; John Irving Bell; Paul Bulcke; DeAnne Julius; Severin Schwan; Peter Voser; Arthur Levinson; and Beatrice Weder di Mauro.


The National Institutes of Health said this week that it has hired Philip Bourne as the first permanent associate director for data science.

Bourne is the associate vice chancellor for innovation and industry alliances at the University of California San Diego and a professor in UCSD's pharmacology department and its Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. He is also the associate director of the RSCB Protein Data Bank. He was editor in chief of the open-access journal PLOS Computional Biology for seven years.


Clay Patterson, managing director of Cerner Capital, has joined the board of directors at Claritas Genomics as part of an agreement between the two companies that included an investment by Cerner in Claritas.


Molecular pathology firm Advanced Cell Diagnostics has appointed Joseph Keegan to serve on its board of directors.

Keegan previously was CEO of ForteBio, which was acquired in 2012 by Pall Corporation, and he spent nine years as CEO of Molecular Devices, which was sold in 2007 to MDS for $615 million. He also formerly was president of worldwide tissue culture at Becton Dickinson and VP of microscope and scientific instruments at Leica.


The Personalized Medicine Coalition has appointed Steven Averbuch and Michael Kolodziek to seats on its board of directors.

Averbuch is VP of translational clinical diagnostic development and pharmacodiagnostics at Bristol-Myers Squibb and Kolodziek is national medical director of Oncology Solutions.

The two new members will join the board as the terms of Joanne Armstrong and Nancy Simonian expire at the end of 2013.


Diagnostics and detection developer T2 Biosystems said this week that it has named Sarah Kalil to be chief operating officer and Steven Scampini to be VP of engineering.

Both Kalil and Scampini recently worked at Hologic, and they have expertise in areas that T2 says are related to the planned commercialization of its T2 Candida diagnostic test.

Kalil has over 20 years experience in the medical devices industry, including serving as COO of Interlace Medical, which was acquired by Hologic in 2011, and as president of Boston Endo-Surgical Technologies, among other positions. Scampini was senior director of drug development at Hologic, and before that he worked in R&D at Philips Medical Systems.


OncoSec Medical said this week that Robert Pierce has joined the company as chief medical officer.

Pierce joins the San Diego-based immunotherapy company from Merck research labs, where he spent seven years, and he formerly was director of the autopsy service at Strong Memorial Hospital at the University of Rochester School of Medicine.


German life sciences firm Analytik Jena has named Marco Tilgner to be managing director of its Japanese subsidiary AJ Japan, as of the beginning of January.

Tilgner will take over the job from Yoshiharu Tada, who has led the subsidiary since its founding in 2007 and is retiring at the end of 2013.


Vermillion has elected James LaFrance as its new chairman of the board. He most recently served as head of digital pathology and acting CEO of Omnyx, and held a series of commercial, strategic marketing and business development leadership roles at Ventana Medical Systems.

LaFrance succeeds Bruce Huebner, who is retiring from the board. Vermillion also said that William Wallen has also retired from its board.


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