Mike Stratton, director of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, has been knighted in the UK. Stratton founded the Cancer Genome Project at the Sanger Institute, leading the team that discovered mutations in the BRAF gene in malignant melanoma. In 2009, his team published the first full genome sequencing of two tumors, a lung cancer and a malignant melanoma. Early in his career, he discovered the BRCA2 breast cancer susceptibility gene.
Harold Davies has been appointed CFO of the J. Craig Venter Institute, where he will report to CEO Craig Venter. Antony Peake has been hired as director of sponsored projects, effective July 1, and will report to Davies.
For the past eight years Davies was CFO at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. Previously he was corporate controller for Alper Ink and also worked as the director of financial planning and analysis for Huttig Building Products. He is a Certified Public Accountant with an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis.
Peake joins JCVI from Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, where he was director of grants accounting. Previously, he held positions at the University of Cambridge in the UK. He is a certified research administrator with a degree in business administration from the University of Cambridge.
Fluidigm has re-elected Samuel Colella and Gajus Worthington to serve as class III directors until the firm's 2016 stockholder meeting. Colella, who is a managing director of Versant Ventures, has been a member and chairman of the company's board since 2000.
Worthington is the company's president, CEO, and co-founder, and he has been a director since the firm launched in 1999.