Greg Porreca has left his post as director of technology for the Personal Genome Project at Harvard Medical School and is taking up a new position this week as director of technology at Good Start Genetics, a startup company that is developing a pre-pregnancy genetic test.
At Harvard, Porreca helped develop the Polonator, a sequencing platform that is being commercialized by Danaher Motion's Dover business.
He was also a consultant to Intelligent Bio-Systems and LightSpeed Genomics.
He holds a PhD in genetics from Harvard, where he worked with George Church, and a BS in biology and computer science from the College of New Jersey.
Ion Torrent Systems recently disclosed the members of its scientific advisory board and its business advisory board. Members of its SAB are:
• Adam Cohen, an assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology as well as physics at Harvard University. He holds a PhD in experimental physical chemistry from Stanford University, a PhD in theoretical physics from Cambridge University, and an AB in chemistry and physics from Harvard.
• David Cumming, a professor in electronics and electrical engineering and leader of the Microsystem Technology Group at the University of Glasgow. He holds a PhD from Cambridge University, and a BEng from the University of Glasgow.
• Michael Deem, a professor of bioengineering and of physics and astronomy at Rice University in Houston. He holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BSci from the California Institute of Technology.
• Jim Lupski, a professor of molecular and human genetics and of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine. He holds an MD/PhD as well as a BA from New York University.
• Amy McGuire, an assistant professor of medicine and medical ethics at the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine. She holds a PhD in medical humanities from the University of Texas Medical Branch, a JD from the University of Houston, and a BA in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. She is also on the advisory board for the X Prize in Genomics.
• Antoine van Oijen, an assistant professor in the department of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. He holds PhD and MSci degrees in physics from Leiden University in the Netherlands.
The sole member of Ion Torrent's business advisory board is Ian Ratcliffe, president, CEO, and director of Stemgent, a Boston-based company developing consumable reagents for stem cell research. Prior to that, he was the president of Upstate, a provider of cell signaling research products and services that was acquired by Serologicals. He has an MBA from the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virigina and an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from the University of Surrey in the UK.