NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Sequenom Chief Medical Officer Allan Bombard plans to retire in June, the company said in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission this week. Bombard has served as the firm's CMO since early 2009, and as one of its CLIA/CAP lab directors since 2010.
CardioDx announced that Melinda Griffith will be its new head of corporate development and general counsel and Doug Ross will the firm's new chief scientific officer. Griffith has previously held various executive management positions at Clarient, which was acquired by GE Healthcare. Ross served as acting chief scientific officer of Life Technologies' medical science division.
Simultaneously, CardioDx appointed James Tobin and Andrew Guggenhime to its board of directors. Tobin was previously CEO of Boston Scientific.Meanwhile, Guggenhime is transitioning currently from his role as CFO at CardioDx to its board of directors.
Keygene's board of directors has appointed Fayaz Khazi as its new CEO, effective May 5.
Khazi recently was VP of business analytics and strategy at Intrexon, where he worked since 2007 in various leadership positions focused on the food and agricultural sectors. He also was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute post-doctoral fellow at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania.
MolecularHealth has added several new members to its advisory board, including Stephen Jones, who from 1999 to 2014 served as the medical director of research for US Oncology Research; Thomas Kean, CEO and president of C-Change, a coalition of stakeholders dedicated to eliminating the cancer burden on the US population; and Kathleen Lokay, president and CEO of Via Oncology.
NanoString Technologies has tapped Tina Nova to serve on its board of directors and to take a seat on its executive compensation committee. Nova co-founded Genoptix and served as its president from 2000 to 2014, and she co-founded and was COO of Nanogen. Nova also was COO of Selective Genetics and she held various research and management positions at Ligand Pharmaceuticals and Hybritech.
Ariosa Diagnostics has elected Kate Falberg to its board of directors and to chair its audit committee. Falberg most recently served as executive vice president and CFO of Jazz Pharmaceuticals. She also held various roles at Amgen, including as senior vice president of finance and strategy and CFO. Currently, she serves on the board of directors and is chair of the audit committee of Halozyme Therapeutics and Medivation.
John Thompson is now senior director of research and development at Claritas Genomics. Previously, he was senior director of applications and external collaboration at next-generation sequencing firm Nabsys, and before that was senior director of genomic research at Helicos BioSciences.
Good Start Genetics has appointed Charles Wagner to its board of directors. Wagner is currently CFO and executive vice president of finance and administration of Bruker. He has also served as CFO and executive vice president of finance and administration at Progress Software Corp. and CFO and vice president of Millipore.
Jeffrey Gordon, director of the Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology at the University of Washington School of Medicine, has been awarded the 2014 Passano Foundation Award.
The annual award, established in 1943, recognizes scientists who have made outstanding contributions to medical research. Gordon's research focus has led to discoveries about the human microbiota, and how genes in the human microbiome provide hosts with traits that are not specified by their human genes. His lab also has focused on two major global health problems, including obesity in Westernized countries and malnutrition and poverty. His research has shown that the nutritional value and metabolic effects of the foods people eat are connected to their gut microbial communities.
Gordon joined the WUSTL School of Medicine in 1981.
Randal Mills has been named president and CEO of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, the state-funded stem cell agency, CIRM said this week. He will replace Alan Trounson, who is stepping down after six years to spend more time with his family in Australia.
Mills formerly was president and CEO of Osiris Therapeutics, an executive at RTI Biologics, a founding member of the University of Florida Tissue Bank, and vice chairman of the American Association of Tissue Banks' standards committee. He has served on the stem cell agency's Grant Review Board for the past five years.
The National Academy of Sciences this week elected 84 new members and 21 foreign associates, including a number of scientists working in the molecular biology and genomics fields.
These investigators include Robert Darnell, president, CEO, and scientific director of the New York Genome Center and Senior Physician at the Rockefeller University Hospital; Edward Buckler, adjunct professor in plant breeding and genetics at Cornell University; James Chen, an HHMI investigator and professor of molecular biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; Michael Green, an HHMI investigator and professor at the Program in Molecular Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School; Benjamin Hall, professor of biology and genome sciences at the University of Washington; Richard Harlan, professor and department co-chair of the department of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley; Kenneth Keegstra, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology in the department of plant biology at Michigan State University; Jeff Lichtman, professor of molecular and cell biology at the Center for Brain Science at Harvard University; Joseph Lutkenhaus, professor in the department of microbiology, molecular genetics, and immunology at the University of Kansas Medical Center; Martin Matzuk, professor of pathology, immunology, and molecular and cellular biology at Baylor College of Medicine; Andrew Murray, professor of molecular and cellular biology and director of the Bauer Center for Genomics Research at Harvard University; Lucia Rothman-Denes, professor in the department of molecular genetics and cell biology at the University of Chicago; and Brenda Schulman, an HHMI investigator and co-director of the Cancer Genetics, Biochemistry, and Cell Biology Program at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
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