Peter Kim will become president of Merck Research Laboratories at the beginning of next year, replacing Edward Scolnick, who stepped down as president and as a member of the Merck board of directors. Kim joined MRL almost two years ago from the MIT’s Whitehead Institute, where he was a professor of biology. Kim holds an undergraduate degree from Cornell University and a PhD in biochemistry from Stanford University.
Tristan Orpin has become vice president of worldwide sales at Illumina. He joins the San Diego-based company from Sequenom, where he was vice president for sales and marketing. Prior to that, he held several senior sales and marketing positions at Bio-Rad Laboratories. Orpin received a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Melbourne.
Protiveris of Gaithersburg, Md., has appointed a new management team: Robert Menzi has become COO, joining the company from Raytheon. Sebastian Kossek is now CSO, after holding management positions at Molecular Imaging. Tim Seeley has moved on from principal development engineer to vice president of engineering. Raj Prabhakar has been appointed director of strategic planning and business development, joining Protiveris from Osiris Pharmaceuticals. Mohan Natesan, who was previously at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC, has become director of surface chemistry. Shanxiang Shen has been made director of proteomics and biochemistry. Prior to joining the company, he was a staff fellow at the NIH. Protiveris has developed a microfluidic protein biochip that uses arrays of microcantilevers to measure molecular interactions.
J. Edward Semple has become executive director of medicinal chemistry at Structural Bioinformatics. Prior to joining SBI, he was an executive director of chemical research at Corvas International. Before that, he held several discovery research positions at DuPont and Shell Development. Semple holds an AB in Chemistry from Rutgers University and a PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania.
Winfried Girg has become sales manager for Gyros’ new subsidiary in Munich. He joins the Uppsala, Sweden-based company from Biacore, where he worked in sales and marketing.