BioNano Genomics has appointed Mike Ward to be vice president of corporate development. Previously, Ward was at Lurie Investment Fund, where he was responsible for managing the life sciences venture capital and private equity investments. Before that, he was at investment banks Leerink Partners, Credit Suisse, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, BMO, and Vector Securities.
The National Human Genome Research Institute has reorganized and created three new branches, appointing a senior investigator to head each branch.
Charles Rotimi will serve as chief of the Metabolic, Cardiovascular, and Inflammatory Diseases branch. Rotimi is director of the National Institutes of Health's Center for Research on Genomics and Global Health. He is on the Executive and Scientific Committee for the International Federation of Human Genetics Societies and was recently elected to the Human Genome Organization Council. He is the founding and past president of the African Society of Human Genetics. In addition, he has participated in the HapMap project, the 1,000 Genomes Project, and the African Genome Variation Project.
Pam Schwartzberg will head the Genetic Disease Research branch. Schwartzberg has been at the NHGRI since 1997 and currently studies T lymphocyte signaling pathways
Julie Segre will serve as chief of the Translational and Functional Genomics branch. She joined the NHGRI's Division of Intramural Research in 2000. Segre studies microbial genomics, focused particularly on the microbes that inhabit the human skin and on tracking hospital outbreaks of multi-drug resistant bacteria. She collaborates closely with the NIH Clinical Center's hospital epidemiology, microbiology and dermatology departments and with the NIH Intramural Sequencing Center.