Lumera has appointed Joseph Vallner to its board of directors. Vallner is president and chief operating officer of Cell Genesys. Prior to joining Cell Genesys in 1999, he held positions at SEQUUS Pharmaceuticals, Syntex, and G.D. Searle. Vallner was also an associate professor of pharmaceutics at the University of Georgia.
Tom Mino, president and CEO of Lumera, said in a statement that Vallner's "operational expertise in bioscience will help us to increase productivity as we grow our proteomics business."
Tom Humphreys, professor of cell and molecular biology at the John A. Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, has been tapped to lead research initiatives for the university's new Center for Genomics, Proteomics and Bioinformatics.
Humphreys has been on the faculty at Manoa for 34 years. During that time, he organized the first recombinant DNA lab in Hawaii, led a reorganization of the UH Cancer Research Center of Hawaii, established the graduate program in cell and molecular biology and founded Hawaii Biotech, the state's biotech venture. He has accepted a three-year appointment as director of the center, effective July 1.
Essam Sheta, director of biochemistry at Power3 Medical Products, has been named to the American Institute of Biological Sciences' review panel for grant proposals related to Parkinson's disease.