Boardroom Media (CEO News)
At CEO (Boardroom Media) we track over 1,000,000 startups and over 5,000,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top California based CEO’ operating in the Bioinformatics space. If you think a CEO’ is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on [email protected].
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Ken Tarkoff
Chief Executive Officer of Syapse
Ken Tarkoff is a health technology veteran with deep experience in facilitating physician, health system, and health plan relationships. Before joining Syapse, Ken most recently served as the Senior Vice President and General Manager at RelayHealth Intelligence, a data and analytics business owned by McKesson, and as Chief Operating Officer of RelayHealth before the company was acquired. Previously, Ken held leadership positions at Xign Corporation, Questium, and Vivra Specialty Partners. Ken holds an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and a BA from Amherst College. Ken enjoys spending time with his wife and two high-school-age kids, one of whom is currently making her college decisions. He also enjoys watching his son play water polo or going out for a few rounds of golf when he has the time.
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About Syapse: Syapse is a real-world evidence company dedicated to extinguishing the fear and burden of serious disease by advancing real-world care
Martin G. Reese
Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer & President of Fabric Genomics (formerly Omicia)
Martin Reese is an internationally recognized expert and entrepreneur in Genomics and Bioinformatics. Prior to founding Omicia, Martin Reese served as Vice President of Discovery Informatics for ValiGen. Prior to this, Martin Reese co-founded Neomorphic, where he served as President and Chief Scientific Officer. The human genome annotation software that Martin Reese developed at Neomorphic, provided the foundation for the successful commercialization of microarrays by Affymetrix. During his career Martin Reese has been actively involved in community-wide assessments of genome annotation. He organized the state-of-the-art Genome Annotation Assessment Project and was a member of the Berkeley Drosophila Genome Project, which provided the essential proof-of-concept platform for “shotgun” sequencing technology. At the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories Martin Reese developed gene-finding algorithms for the Human Genome Project. He holds a Masters degree in Medical Informatics from the University of Heidelberg and a Ph.D. in Genetics jointly from the University of Hohenheim, Germany and the University of California, Berkeley.
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About Fabric Genomics (formerly Omicia): Global healthcare platform for genomics-driven precision medicine. Fabric’ proven AI algorithms power genomic insights.
Hesaam Esfandyarpour
Founder and CEO of Genapsys
Hesaam is the Founder and CEO of GenapSys Inc. He is an inventor of electronic DNA sequencing, a technology he developed during his PhD work at Stanford. Hesaam has dedicated the past decade of his life to the development of this novel DNA sequencing technology, which has at its core the convergence of multiple fields of science – engineering, chemistry, biology, and computing. Hesaam incubated the technology at the Stanford Genome Technology Center for a period of six years before securing licenses to the IP and incorporating GenapSys in January of 2010. He has grown GenapSys from just a handful of employees working out of Menlo Labs incubator space, to over 50 employees across seven functional teams. In 2012, Hesaam partnered GenapSys with StartX, an accelerator for the development of Stanford’s top entrepreneurs. He has raised approximately $50M for GenapSys in Seed, Series A, and Series B rounds of financing. Hesaam holds a PhD and MS in Electrical Engineering, and MSc Management degree, all from Stanford University. He earned his BS in Electrical Engineering with Honors from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran. When he is not at GenapSys HQ (which is rare!) you can find Hesaam spending time outdoors, hiking or spending time with family and friends. He is also a great lover of poetry, his favorite of which are poems by the Persian poet Saa’di.
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About Genapsys: Transform the human condition by building a scalable, affordable genomic sequencing ecosystem that will support research and diagnostics
Tim Sweeney
Co-Founder & CEO of Inflammatix
Tim Sweeney, MD, PhD is the co-Founder & CEO of Inflammatix, Inc., which focuses on using robust informatics and machine learning to derive novel HostDx™ diagnostics based on ‘reading’ patterns in the immune system. Inflammatix’s first tests are focused on diagnosing acute bacterial and viral infections and sepsis. The company is funded by Khosla Ventures, Stanford-StartX Fund and the U.S. government’s DARPA program. Tim Sweeney completed his MD and PhD at Duke University, after which he was a surgery resident at Stanford. While training as a surgeon, he became frustrated with the limitations of current diagnostic tools for infection. During his residency, he completed a postdoctorate MS in Biomedical Informatics, mentored by Dr. Purvesh Khatri. Together they designed the custom informatics algorithms for sifting through heterogeneous ‘big data,’ which formed the core technology on which Inflammatix is based.
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About Inflammatix: Inflammatix develops novel molecular diagnostics for acute infections and sepsis that work by reading the immune system.
Joseph Huang
CEO of StartX (Stanford-StartX Fund)
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About StartX (Stanford-StartX Fund): StartX is an educational non-profit that helps Stanford’s top entrepreneurs.
Jessica M. Gibson
Chief Executive Officer of Ariel Precision Medicine
Jessica Gibson is CEO and Chair of Ariel Precision Medicine which is positioned as the solution for early targeted management of complex chronic disorders, starting with pancreatic diseases. She has lead the development, clinical validation and commercial launch of Ariel’s first product, PancreasDx®, and a cloud based digital health platform. Jessica Gibson has focused on working with multiple stakeholders including establishing partnerships with National Pancreas Foundation and pharmaceutical companies. Prior to co-founding Ariel, Jessica Gibson worked with Purdue Pharma in Sales and Medical Marketing after earning National Product leader in 2012. Prior to Purdue she worked in the biotechnology field with Gene Wiz Inc. until 2007 when she joined Shionogi Pharmaceuticals Inc. Before entering industry, she worked in clinical care as a paramedic and published GI research. Jessica Gibson received her executive MBA from Liberty University after earning a Bachelor of Science in Emergency Medicine from the University of Pittsburgh.
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About Ariel Precision Medicine: Ariel Precision Medicine Creates innovative solutions to simplify the personalized treatment of complex disease.
Wei Zhou
Founder and CEO of Centrillion Technologies
Dr. Wei Zhou is Founder, President and CEO of Centrillion. While a student at Stanford, he joined the pioneering genomic technology start-up Affymetrix (now NASDAQ: AFFX) where a generation of future industry leaders and scientists were inspired to change the world for the better through genomics. He continues to be fascinated by the profound and positive impact of genomic technologies in scientific research, health care, agriculture and other fields despite the severe limitations of current genomic technologies and is passionate about making genomic technology accurate and accessible. Prior to founding Centrillion, Dr. Zhou was a partner at the technology law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati where he advised life sciences, clean tech and digital media companies and venture capital investors. He also served as a senior advisor to the global law firm Covington and Burling. At Affymetrix, he was a vice president of intellectual property and advanced technology until 2008. He was also credited with building Affymetrix’ rapidly growing China business. Dr. Zhou received his PhD from Virginia Tech (John Lee Pratt Fellow), his postdoctoral training from Emory University Medical School and his JD from Stanford University Law School (Associate Editor, Stanford Law Review). He is also a graduate of Harvard Business School’s General Management Program.
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About Centrillion Technologies: Centrillion Biosciences develops genomics and DNA analyses technology for personalized medicine, life sciences research, and bioinformatics.
Yongwei Zhang
Group VP, CEO of Americas Region of BGI Group
Yongwei Zhang, Ph.D., serves as Executive Director of BGI Research, the R&D arm of BGI-Shenzhen, world’s largest genomics service company. He is also Chief Operating Officer of Complete Genomics (San Jose, CA), a wholly-owned subsidiary of BGI. Yongwei Zhang has over 20 years of experience in optics-based instruments and systems. He began his career in Quinta Technologies developing optically-assisted computer hard drives. Quinta was later acquired by Seagate. He was a Co-Founder of telecom component startup company iolon, Inc, which has raised ~$100million VC funding. He joined biotech startup Guava Technologies in 2005, where he held positions with increasing responsibilities. Guava was later acquired by Millipore, subsequently by Merck KGaA. As Head of New Product Introduction at Merck Life Science division, he helped to develop and manufacture several generations of Guava flowcytometry instruments and reagent kits, including the award-winning Muse Cell Analyzer. In 2013, he joined Complete Genomics as Sr. Director of Engineering, responsible for the development of NGS sequencing platform BGISEQ series. Yongwei Zhang is also a strong advocate for STEM education. He served as a Board Member of US nationally top-ranked Saratoga School Union District. Yongwei Zhang received his B. Eng in Precision Instruments and B.Sc. in Applied Mathematics from Tsinghua University in Beijing, M.S. in Computer Sciences, M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD.
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About BGI Group: BGI Group is one of the world’s largest DNA sequencing service providers.
Jessica Green
CEO & Co-founder of Phylagen
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About Phylagen: Phylagen is digitizing the global microbiome to create a more transparent world
Benjamin Wang
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Chimera Bioengineering
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About Chimera Bioengineering: Chimera solves the challenges of CARs with drug-responsive gene regulators, which allow us to re-program of the immune system.
Charlie Silver
CEO & Co-founder of Mission Bio
Charlie Silver is CEO and co-founder of Mission Bio where he leads a team dedicated to solving complex biological problems with precision engineering, innovative biochemistry, and supported bioinformatics. Charlie has dedicated his career to commercializing next-generation hardware technology and scientific instrumentation at emerging ventures in healthcare and semiconductor. Prior to Mission Bio, he led engineering at Novelx (acquired by Agilent) and then served in R&D and marketing at Agilent. Charlie received a joint MBA from UC Berkeley and Columbia University, an MS in physics from UW Madison, and a BA in physics from Columbia University.
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About Mission Bio: Mission Bio develops only single-cell multi-omics platform integrating genotype and phenotype for cancer research and biomarker development.
Adrian Ferrero
Co-Founder and CEO of Biome Makers
Adrián Ferrero is the Co-Founder & CEO of Biome Makers. With recognition from the Spanish Government, Illumina Accelerator, and MIT Technology Review —Adrián is a self-described entrepreneur on a mission to improve the world. He holds a Master of Science in Economics from the University of Salamanca and a Master of Environmental Management from the Turku School of Economics and Business Administration.
Growing up in an agricultural region of Spain inspired Adrián to co-found, together with Alberto Acedo, Biome Makers Inc., and create its patented BeCrop® technology. From there, Biome Makers has received many awards worldwide (AgSum in Japan, agripreneur 2019 in Greece, WINnovation in US, or Best innovative startup by AgFunder) and attracted over $24M from investors. Prior to Biome Makers, Adrián founded three start-ups and worked as an innovation consultant for more than nine years.
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About AC-Gen Reading Life, Biome Makers: Biome Makers develops neural biocomputing applications that enable sustainable and productive farming.
Shengjiang Liu
President and CEO of Avirmax
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About Avirmax, Bayer HealthCare: Avirmax is a Delaware corporation that focuses on adeno-associated virus research, development, and manufacturing.
Sarah Richardson
CEO of MicroByre
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About MicroByre: MicroByre is a biotechnology company that specializes in microbiology, synthetic biology, molecular biology, and computational biology.
Bahram Kermani
Founder & CEO of Crystal Genetics, Inc.
Founder & CEO at Crystal Genetics, Inc.
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About Crystal Genetics, Inc.: Crystal Genetics is a high-quality genetic testing with a primary focus on predisposition to and early detection of cancer.
Stephen Larson
CEO / Co-founder of MetaCell
CEO / Co-founder at MetaCell
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About MetaCell, OpenWorm: Software for Neuroscience
