NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) - Navigenics has appointed Jack Lord to take over the office of president and CEO, which was vacated by Mari Baker, who has taken the CEO job at PlayFirst. Lord was chief innovation officer at Humana, and before that he was president of Health Dialog. He also has been COO of the American Hospital Association, executive VP of Anne Arundel Medical Center, and executive VP of Sun Health.
Celera this week said that company Chief Financial Officer Joel Jung has resigned from the job for other opportunities, and it has appointed Ugo DeBlasi to take over the spot. DeBlasi formerly worked at Applera, where he was chief accounting officer for eight years. He also was VP at Celera Genomics, and has served as VP and Controller reporting to the CFO at Celera.
According to an SEC filing this week, Celera will pay Jung a lump-sum payment of $328,750 under the terms of a separation agreement.
Patrick Terry will join the board of directors at TcLand Expression, a company focused on gene expression biomarkers in immunology. Terry is a co-founder and former director of Genomic Health, and he is a founder of the Personalized Medicine Coalition and the Coalition for 21st Century Medicine. He also is a co-founder and former president of the International Genetic Alliance.
Genetic Alliance has named Lisa Wise to be chief operating officer and James O'Leary to be chief innovation officer. Wise, who has been at Genetic Alliance for five years, will develop partnerships and new funding models. O'Leary will direct strategic innovation and will work with Genetic Alliance's partners.
GeneNews has appointed David Sable to serve on the company's board of directors. Sable was a chief resident in obstetrics and gynecology at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center and he was a fellow in reproductive endocrinology at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He also was director of the Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Science at Saint Barnabas Medical Center. He currently directs all life sciences investing for the Special Situations Funds in New York.
Gene Network Sciences has named Eric Schadt to serve as co-chair of its scientific advisory board. Schadt will leave his job as executive scientific director of genetics at Merck and will work at GNS to develop an open-access genomic data platform. Schadt is an affiliate professor in the department of biostatistics at the University of Washington in Seattle, and he was a fellow in the Institute of Synthetic and Systems Biology at Imperial College London.
Peter Rogan has been named the new Canada Research Chair in Genome Bioinformatics at the University of Western Ontario. Rogan is working at the university to develop new ways to identify and interpret disease-causing genetic variants that can help develop molecular diagnostic tests. Rogan received this chair position under the Canada Research Chairs Program, which is a government effort that will name 14 total chair positions.
Philip Bourne has received the 2009 Benjamin Franklin Award in the Life Sciences. Bourne is a computational biologist at the University of California San Diego, and he was nominated for the award for his work involving bioinformatics, the Protein Data Bank, as founding editor-in-chief of PLoS Computational Biology, and for other contributions.
Stephen Bustin has joined the scientific advisory board at Pentabase. Bustin is a professor of molecular science at the Institute of Cell and Molecular Science, Barts, and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry.
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