NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Ariosa Diagnostics has appointed Michael Aicher to its board of directors. He is currently the CEO of Omicia. Previously, he was co-founder and CEO of the National Genetics Institute, a wholly owned subsidiary of Laboratory Corporation of America.
Adaptive Biotechnologies, a Seattle-based developer of sequencing assays for the adaptive immune system, said this week that Robert Hershberg has joined its board of directors.
Hershberg is CEO, board member, and co-founder of VentiRx Pharmaceuticals, and he previously was senior VP and chief medical officer at Dendreon, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, and associate physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Cellectis has tapped Pierre Schwich to be company CFO. He is succeeding Marc Le Bozec, who has been CFO since 2006 and is leaving to focus on a new business venture, the Paris-based company said.
Schwich formerly was an industrial operations manager at Corning, Danone, and Hewlett-Packard, and he has worked in administrative and financial management at Genesys and Global Design Technologies.
The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council said this week that Cambridge University Professor Tom Blundell has been reappointed as chair of the organization for a period of two years.
Genome British Columbia has named Rachael Ritchie to be director of business development.
Ritchie previously was a molecular geneticist at the Food, Fisheries, and Aquaculture Department Research and Productivity Council in New Brunswick. She also project managed the International Chair in Eco-Innovation at the UniverSud Paris/University of Versailles, and she was an analyst in the Science Technology Policy Department at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Immunoassay developer Aushon Biosystems has appointed Thomas Mac Mahon, former president and CEO of LabCorp, to a post on its board of directors. Mac Mahon also has been a senior VP at Hoffman-LaRoche, president of Roche Diagnostics Group, and chairman of PharMerica.
Definiens has appointed Ralf Huss to be chief medical officer. Huss has 20 years of training and experience in histopathology and cancer research, including serving as global head of histopathology and tissue biomarker at Roche Diagnostics, and he co-founded the biotech company APCETH.
Personalized medicine technology company IntelliMedix said recently that Warren Lammert has joined its board of directors. Lammert is chairman and co-founder of the Epilepsy Therapy Project and Epilepsy.com. He is founder, principal, and chief investment officer of Granite Point Capital.
The St. Louis non-profit venture development organization BioGenerator said this week that it has named James McCarter to be a senior entrepreneur in residence.
McCarter currently is an entrepreneur in residence at Monsanto, which is partnering with BioGenerator to support the development of start-ups in the St. Louis area. McCarter will work with entrepreneurs to build companies and help them raise capital and develop their technologies. He also will identify promising firms from St. Louis and around the world to join the BioGenerator.
He was founder, president, and chief scientific officer of Divergence, a genomics and informatics company that was bought by Monsanto in 2011.
The University of Alabama at Birmingham said this week that Sara Will Crews Finley, who was co-director of the UAB Laboratory of Medical Genetics for 30 years, died on Feb. 20.
The university said that she co-founded the first medical genetics program in the southeastern US. She launched a prenatal genetics lab, and she was the first female president of the University of Alabama Medical Alumni Association and the Jefferson County Medical Society, before she retired in 1996.
Response Biomedical has named Darby Darilek to be its director of US Sales. Darilek formerly was a regional sales manager at Teleflex/Arrow International, a sales manager at Stryker Orthopedics, and a sales consultant with Biomet Central Texas Orthopedics.
Nanobiosym, a developer of companion diagnostics technologies, said this week that Robert Langer has joined its scientific advisory board. Langer is the David H. Koch Institute professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and he has helped to launch 25 companies.
Langer has been awarded the National Medal of Innovation and Technology, the Lemelson-MIT Innovation Prize, and he has been elected to the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Sciences.
Agilent Technologies said this week that it has awarded its Agilent Thought Leader Award to Ronald DePinho, an oncologist at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
The award provides funds for personnel and an Agilent 6550 iFunnel Q-TOF LC/MS system to support research. DePinho and his team are seeking to discover and characterize alterations in metabolic flux during tumor initiation and maintenance and to identify biomarkers for detecting pancreatic cancer.
Interleukin Genetics has appointed Scott Snyder to be chief marketing officer. He will head the launch of the firm's PST genetic risk panel for dental preventive care, and marketing for its professional healthcare tests for osteoarthritis progression and other tests.
Ontario Genomics Institute President and CEO Mark Poznansky has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Life Sciences Ontario.
Poznansky has been involved in life sciences in Ontario for 20 years, as CEO of Robarts Research Institute and he is a founding member of Research Canada.
Assay Depot and the Rare Genomics Institute this week announced the winners of its Rare Disease Science Research Challenge, which will provide a total of up to $500,000 in research services from a range of companies to scientists pursuing 26 different rare diseases.
The awards provide between $25,000 and $75,000 for Platinum award winners, between $10,000 and $25,000 for Gold award winners, and between $5,000 and $10,000 for Silver award winners.
The Platinum winners include: a genome analysis software award from Ingenuity Systems to multiple winners and primer design services from DNA Software to Beth Drolet and Dawn Siegel for the study of infantile hemangiomas.
The Gold award winners include custom zinc finder nuclease services from Sigma Life Science to Vinicio de Jesus Perez for idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension; expression analysis services from Genemarkers to Lori Silveira for chronic beryllium disease; assay development services from Cisbio Bioassays to Allison Moore for Charcot-Marie-tooth disease; next-generation sequencing analysis from Novocraft Technologies to Jason Chen for progressive supranuclear palsy; bioinformatics software from BioDiscovery to George Carlson for fatal familial insomnia; bioinformatics consulting services from BioVariance to Lori Sames for giant axonal neuropathy; TAQ reagents from Sigma Life Science to Heather Etchevers for congenital melanocytic and to Nevi Stefan Stamm for Prader-Will Syndrome.
The Silver award winners include: sequencing services from Otogenetics to Joan Marini for osteogenesis imperfect; and chromosome methylation assays from Karyologic to Shannon Muir for rhabdomyosarcoma.
NanoString Technologies has appointed Gary Riordan as VP of quality and regulatory affairs and Kathy Surace-Smith as VP and general counsel.
Riordan formerly was VP of quality and regulatory affairs at Sequenom and director of regulatory affairs at Roche's Ventana Medical Systems.
Surace-Smith recently was VP and general counsel and corporate secretary of SonoSite, and she previously was VP and general counsel at Metawave Communications.
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