Skip to main content
Premium Trial:

Request an Annual Quote

People in the News: Norman Sharpless, Patricia Rivera, Michael Bell

Norman Sharpless
The US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar has appointed Norman Sharpless as acting commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration. Sharpless, currently the director of the National Cancer Institute, will take over for current FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb who announced on March 5 that he will resign from the post in one month. Before his position at the NCI, Sharpless directed the University of North Carolina's Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, authored more than 100 research papers, and treated leukemia patients.


Patricia Rivera
Bioaffinity Technologies has formed a scientific and medical advisory board and named Patricia Rivera as its chairperson. Rivera is a professor of pulmonary diseases and critical care medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. She is also director of the UNC Lung Cancer Screening Clinic.


Michael Ball
Contextual Genomics has appointed Michael Ball as the firm's CEO. He previously served as global VP of commercial, informatics, at Illumina. Prior to Illumina, Ball acted as CEO of GenoLogics Life Sciences Software. He is currently a director of the Canary Foundation, a non-profit focused on early cancer detection.


For more recent items on executive appointments and promotions in the omics and molecular diagnostics industries, please see the People in the News page on our website.