Jacob Thaysen and Sam Raha

Agilent Technologies has appointed Jacob Thaysen president of the firm's life sciences and applied markets group, replacing Patrick Kaltenbach, who left the company on April 20. Thaysen currently serves as a senior vice president at the company and as president of its diagnostics and genomics group. He joined Agilent in 2012 as part of the acquisition of Dako, where he served as corporate vice president of R&D. Before that, Thaysen was founding partner and chief technology officer of Cantion, a research and defense application development company based in Denmark.

Agilent also announced that Sam Raha, who currently serves as senior vice president of the firm's strategy and corporate development group, will take over as president of the diagnostics and genomics group. Raha previously served as vice president of global marketing at Illumina, and vice president and general manager of the genomic assays business unit at Life Technologies. He also held the position of vice president and general manager of Agilent's Americas field operations for the life sciences and chemical analysis group from 2004 to 2007.

Thaysen's and Raha's appointments are effective immediately, and both will continue to report to Agilent President and CEO Mike McMullen, the firm said.