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People in the News: Elizabeth Blackburn, Charlie Slacik, and More

Elizabeth Blackburn

The Salk Institute for Biological Studies has appointed Elizabeth Blackburn as president. Blackburn will join the Salk Institute effective Jan. 1, 2016. In 2001, she served as a Salk non-resident fellow. Blackburn is currently a professor in the department of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco. She won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2009 for discovering the molecular nature of telomeres and for co-discovering telomerase. In addition to the Nobel Prize, Blackburn has received nearly every major award in science, including the Lasker, Gruber, and Gairdner prizes.


Charlie Slacik

Quidel has elected Charlie Slacik to its board of directors, expanding the company's board membership to eight. Slacik currently serves a member of the board and audit committee at Sequenom. From October 2006 until June 2011, he served as the senior vice president and chief financial officer for Beckman Coulter, after which the company was bought by Danaher.


Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort Advisory Panel

The National Institutes of Health have appointed the initial members of the Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort Advisory Panel, an expert group of outside advisors that will provide ongoing guidance and oversight of the PMI Cohort Program. The program, scheduled to begin in 2016, will build a cohort of 1 million or more volunteers that will expand our understanding of the ways to improve health and treat disease.

The initial panel members are:

  • Lon Cardon, senior vice president of alternative discovery and development for GlaxoSmithKline
  • Alta Charo, professor of law and bioethics for the University of Wisconsin Law and School of Medicine and Public Health
  • Tony Coles, chairman and chief executive officer for Yumanity Therapeutics
  • Rory Collins, head of the department of population health and professor of medicine and epidemiology for the University of Oxford
  • Eric Dishman, Intel fellow and general manager for health and life sciences for Intel Corporation
  • Alejandra Gepp, associate director for the Institute of Hispanic Health's National Council of La Raza
  • Sachin Kehterpal, associate professor for the department of anesthesiology at the University of Michigan Medical School
  • Marie Lynn Miranda, provost and professor of statistics for Rice University, and adjunct professor of pediatrics at Duke University, the University of Michigan, and Baylor College of Medicine
  • Bray Patrick-Lake, director of stakeholder engagement for the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative and director of patient engagement for Duke University's CTSA
  • Gregory Simon, senior investigator and psychiatrist for the Group Health Research Institute, and chair of the scientific advisory board for Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance
  • Sharon Terry, president and CEO of Genetic Alliance
  • David Williams, professor of public health and professor of African and African-American Studies and Sociology at Harvard University

For more recent items on executive appointments and promotions in the omics and molecular diagnostics industries, please see the People in the News page on our website.