LaunchCyte of Pittsburgh has added Ian Williams, head of global discovery strategy for Pfizer, to its board. In his two decades at Pfizer, Williams has held various leadership positions and has helped plan Pfizer’s investments in biotechnology.
The bioinformatics incubator has also named Robert Unkovic, a partner with investment firm Berkowitz Pierchalski, as a board member. Berkowitz Pierchalski helped LaunchCyte raise $2 million in its initial funding round.
Michael Waterman, professor of mathematics, biological sciences, and computer science at the University of Southern California, and Wing Hung Wong, professor of computational biology, department of biostatistics at Harvard University, have joined the scientific advisory board of BioDiscovery, a Los Angeles-based provider of gene expression analysis software.
Co-developer of the Smith-Waterman algorithm for sequence comparison and of the Lander-Waterman formula for physical mapping, Waterman holds a USC associates chair in natural sciences and is an affiliate of the experimental genomics center.