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People in the News: Feb 27, 2009

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) - Mari Baker next week will leave her job as CEO and president of Navigenics, where she served since the company started in 2007, according to Navigenics. Baker has taken on the job of CEO of an entertainment and video game company called Playfirst.

While the company searches for a replacement, board members Dana Mead and Sue Siegel will manage the business. Baker will continue to serve as a board member.


Andrew von Eschenbach, who recently stepped down as commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, has joined the healthcare consulting firm Greenleaf Health as a senior advisor. Eschenbach also previously was director of the National Cancer Institute and an oncologist. He served as FDA commissioner since 2005 and left at the beginning of 2009 with the changing of presidential administrations.


Illumina CEO Jay Flatley will take a seat on the board of directors at Helixis, a nucleic acid analysis tools developer. Flatley also serves on the board of directors at Illumina, GenVault, and on the Keck Graduate Institute's board of trustees.


Cepheid CEO John Bishop has joined the board of directors at Essure. Bishop, who has held Cepheid's top post since 2002, previously was CEO at Vysis, at MicroProbe, and at Source Scientific Systems.


Kevin McCormack and Joanne Stephenson have both started new positions in Evogen's executive ranks. McCormack will take over the post of VP of sales and marketing. He previously worked in a variety of management positions at Amersham, Imaging Research, Guava Technologies, MDS Sciex, and Chip-man Technologies.

Stephenson takes on the job of VP of corporate business development and clinical diagnostics. She was involved in senior management at Response Biomedical and at Innovative Biosensors.


Gene Network Sciences has appointed Michael Gilman to serve on its board of directors. Gilman is CEO of Stromedix, and he served as an executive VP of research at Biogen Idec and as CSO at Ariad Pharmaceuticals.


Molecular Vision, a spin-out of Imperial College London, has appointed Peter Woodford to serve as its non-executive chairman. Woodford previously worked with Roche Diagnostics/Boehringer Mannheim.


IO Informatics has added four new members to its Working Group on Informatics for Personalized Medicine, including Uwe Christians, Dan Crowther, Herbert Fritsche, and Kathy Gibson.

Christians is a pharmacologist and toxicologist at Mesizinishche Hocshschule Hannover in Germany, and he is director of the Clinical Nutrition Research Unit Mass Spectrometry Core at the University of Colorado.

Crowther is head of informatics for the Translational Medicine Research Collaboration in Scotland, and he has worked at Wyeth and GlaxoSmithKline.

Fritsche is chief of the Clinical Chemistry Laboratory in the Department of Laboratory Medicine at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Kathy Gibson is president and founder of Helio Consulting, and previously she served as VP of worldwide research informatics at Pfizer.


Protein Discovery has hired Jeffrey Komatz to serve as CFO. Komatz formerly was corporate controller at RTI Biologics, and was VP and corporate controller at Tutogen Medical.


Applied DNA Sciences has named Janice Meraglia director of communications. Meraglia formerly was senior VP and chief administrative officer of Lehman Brothers' Global Credit Products, and she worked at CIBC World Markets.


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