Jürgen Schwiezer will become CEO of Roche Diagnostics on Jan. 1, 2008. He will succeed Severin Schwan, who will take over the role of CEO of the Roche Group from Franz Humer in March.
Schwiezer is currently president of the Europe, Middle East, and Africa regions for Roche Diagnostics. He joined Boehringer Mannheim in 1976 and held a number of management positions in marketing and sales. That firm was acquired by Roche in 1997.
Schwiezer also will serve on Roche’s corporate executive committee.
Gene Express has appointed David Lester as senior VP of strategy and corporate development. Lester previously worked as New York site head for Pfizer’s global clinical technology business, and he was founder and director of Pfizer Human Health Technologies.
Lester also was a director of clinical technologies for experimental medicine at Pharmacia, and was a senior service advisor to the Office of Pharmaceutical Sciences and an associate director and team leader at the US Food and Drug Administration.
Assay Designs has named Michael Mullenix to the post of VP of research and development and Gabriella Szekely-Klepser as VP of science and technology.
Mullenix previously was at Amgen, where he was principal scientist in clinical immunology, and he has held leadership roles at Molecular Staging, Becton Dickinson, and Strategic Diagnostics.
Szekely-Klepser has been an associate research fellow at Pfizer Global R&D, and she has held various R&D roles at 3M Corporation.