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People In The News: Sep 12, 2014

People in the News

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Mary-Claire King of the University of Washington, Seattle, has won the 2014 Lasker-Koshland Special Achievement Award in Medical Science to recognize and honor her for contributions to medical science and society, particularly her discovery of the gene BRCA1 and its role in hereditary breast cancer.

King is the American Cancer Society Research Professor of Genetics and Medicine at the University of Washington. She was elected to serve as the 2012 president of the American Society of Human Genetics and she has also served on the editorial board of the ASHG's American Journal of Human Genetics.


The J. Craig Venter Institute has hired Nicole DeBerg as its new chief operating officer. DeBerg will report to J. Craig Venter, the institute's founder and CEO, and President Karen Nelson.

Before joining JCVI, DeBerg was chief financial officer of the San Diego Housing Commission and the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute. Additionally, she has held leadership roles at a number of biotechnology firms, including Altair Therapeutics, Kalypsys, and Depotech.


Paul Ladestein has been appointed CEO of MyCartis, a new joint venture between Biocartis and Pronota.

Ladestein joined Biocartis in 2013 as Evaluation business unit manager after working for Luminex.


Ignyta has appointed Robert Wild as chief scientific officer and senior vice president of research.

Previously, Wild held several positions at OSI Pharmaceuticals, including as senior director of oncology research, in vivo pharmacology, and molecular imaging and research. He also spent four years at Bristol-Myers Squibb.


GenomeQuest has appointed Robert Hoyt as an independent director of the firm. Hoyt is currently the chief operating officer of Eximo.

Previously, he was general manager of Endeco Technologies, which was acquired by Oracle in 2011. He has held executive roles at both startup and publicly held software companies.


Epic Sciences has appointed Glen Freiberg as VP of regulatory affairs and quality assurance.

Freiberg formerly held positions of increasing responsibility at Upjohn, Coulter Corporation , Curtin Matheson Scientific, and Boehringer Mannheim. He also was VP of clinical and regulatory affairs at Oncor, where he completed pre-market approval work on DNA probes for cancer and handled a submission strategy for US Food and Drug Administration premarket approval for the probes. He also was VP at Bard Diagnostic Sciences, where he completed two PMA submissions. He launched his career as an FDA investigator.


Hologic said this week in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that Rohan Hastie has resigned from his post as division president of diagnostics.

Hastie will remain with the company until Nov. 28, 2014, to assist in the transition to a new division president of the diagnostics division.


Public Health England said this week it has named Derrick Crook as director of microbiology. In the role, Crook will lead the translation of genomic technologies to microbiology practice through partnerships with universities, PHE said.

Crook is a professor of microbiology in the Nuffield Department of Medicine at Oxford University, co-director of the Oxford Biomedical Research, Infection Theme, and a practicing clinical microbiologist and infectious disease physician at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust.


BioData has hired Louis Culot as its new CEO.

Prior to joining the company, Culot was the VP of marketing and business development at BioDiscovery, a developer of genomics software for life science research and clinical applications. He also worked for CambridgeSoft holding multiple roles including VP of enterprise applications and executive director of research informatics.


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