NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Danaher said this week that President and CEO Lawrence Culp will retire in March 2015, and that he will be succeeded by current Executive VP Thomas Joyce.
After he steps down from his posts, Culp will continue serving Danaher in an advisory role into the first quarter of 2016. Culp has been Danaher's president and CEO for 13 years, the company said. Joyce has served Danaher as executive VP since 2006, and he currently is in charge of the company's diagnostics, life sciences, and water quality platforms. He has worked for the company in various capacities dating back to 1989.
23andMe has appointed Jill Hagenkord its new chief medical officer. Hagenkord joins 23andMe from InVitae where she served as medical director. Prior to that, she was chief medical officer and senior vice president at Complete Genomics. She was also founder and chief medical officer for iKaryos Diagnostics, associate professor of pathology at Creighton University School of Medicine, director of molecular pathology and clinical genomics at Creighton Medical Laboratories, and pathologist at Deltagen. She is a board-certified medical genetic pathologist.
John Boyce will head up Bio-Rad's Cambridge-based Digital Biology Center, formed as part of Bio-Rad's acquisition of GnuBio last week. Boyce was previously co-founder, president, and CEO of GnuBio. Before that, he was head of business development and scientific collaborations at Helicos. He was also senior director of commercial development at Parallele Biosciences and senior director of sales and marketing at Sequenom.
Bio-Reference Laboratories has appointed Robert Daber director of research and development and director of cancer genetics. Daber was previously the technical director of clinical genetics at the University of Pennsylvania, where he helped develop next-generation sequencing-based diagnostic cancer tests. Prior to that, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
Intrexon Founder and Chief Science Officer Thomas Reed has resigned from his position on the firm's board of directors. The company has nominated former Ernst and Young Chairman and CEO James Turley to fill Reed's vacant spot.
Reed will remain the company's CSO. Turley led Ernst and Young for a dozen years before retiring in 2013, and he currently holds several other board posts, including at Citigroup and Emerson Electric Company.
Daniel Rader has been named chair of the Department of Genetics in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Rader has been at Penn for 20 years and holds multiple leadership roles at the medical school. He currently is a professor of medicine, chief of the Division of Translational Medicine and Human Genetics, co-director of the Penn Medicine Biobank, and associate director of the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics. His research has involved using human genetics and model systems approaches to study novel biological pathways in lipoproteins metabolism and atherosclerosis.
Nazneen Aziz has joined Phoenix Children's Hospital as senior VP of research and chief research officer. She will be tasked with establishing and developing the Phoenix Children's Research Institute and with helping to develop the Ronald A. Matricaria Institute of Molecular Medicine and Barrow Neurological Institute at Phoenix Children's. At the research institute, Aziz will work with Phoenix Children's collaborating partners on three core infrastructure areas, medical and scientific, genomic, and clinical.
She recently was director of molecular medicine at the College of American Pathologists, and she formerly was VP of R&D at Interleukin Genetics, VP of external research at Point Therapeutics, and director of translational research at Novartis Institute of Biomedical Research. She also was an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital in Boston, where she discovered the function of a new gene involved in recessive polycystic kidney disease.
The Genome Analysis Centre has tapped Sarah Cossey to be director of operations. In the role, she will oversee four areas, including platforms and pipelines, external relations, scientific computing, and finance and business support. The operations division that she will direct also is responsible for delivering TGAC's National Capability in Genomics.
Cossey, a professional accountant and project manager, formerly was head of finance and business support for the Office of Public Sector Information for the Cabinet Office in London. She also spent three years in a private sector media company, and she worked in finance and auditing within local governments and the National Health Service.
Knome has appointed Josh Forsythe vice president of sales and marketing. He joins Knome from Golden Helix, where he was most recently VP of business development.
Professor Alan Ashworth, chief executive of the Institute of Cancer Research, London, has been awarded the 2015 Genetics Society medal for his genetics research achievements.
Ashworth worked on the team that discovered the BRCA2 gene, and he has pioneered new cancer treatment methods that exploit genetic weaknesses in cancer cells, such as PARP inhibitor drugs aimed at treating patients with BRCA mutations. He has served as ICR's chief executive since 2011.
GNS Healthcare said this week it has named Mark Pottle chief financial officer.
Pottle previously was CFO at N-of-One and at UnitedHealth Group's Optum Insight – Accountable Care Business Unit, and he was VP of finance and business operations at Picis, a healthcare IT company.
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