Robert Gentleman

Consumer genetics firm 23andMe has appointed Robert Gentleman, formerly of Genentech, as its VP of computational biology.

The company recently announced it would launch a therapeutic division led by Richard Scheller, who was executive VP of research and early development at Genentech. Scheller is slated to join 23andMe at the start of April as chief science officer and the head of the therapeutics division.

Gentleman will work with Scheller employing data analytics and theoretical models to pinpoint trends that can inform drug discovery and development. Before joining 23andMe, Gentleman was senior director of bioinformatics and computational biology at Genentech. Prior to that he was head of the computational biology department at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, as well as a professor at Harvard University, the University of Auckland, and the University of Waterloo.