Dr. James C. Blair has been a Partner of Domain since its founding in 1985. Dr. Blair has over 40 years experience with venture and emerging growth companies. In the course of this experience, he has been involved in the creation and successful development at the Board level of over 40 life sciences ventures, including Amgen, Aurora Biosciences, Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Applied Biosystems, Dura Pharmaceuticals, GeneOhm Sciences, Molecular Dynamics, Nuvasive, Pharmion and Volcano. Present board memberships include Cadence Pharmaceuticals, Cell Biosciences, Clovis Oncology, Inc., CoDa Therapeutics, Five Prime Therapeutics, GenVault, Helixis, Meritage Pharma, Microchip Biotechnologies, NeuroPace, and Zogenix.
A former managing director of Rothschild Inc., Dr. Blair was directly involved at a senior level with Rothschild/New Court venture capital activities from 1978 to 1985. From 1969 to 1978, he was associated with F.S. Smithers and Co. and White, Weld and Co., two investment banking firms actively involved with new ventures and emerging growth companies. From 1961 to 1969, Dr. Blair was an engineering manager with RCA Corporation, during which time he received a David Sarnoff Fellowship.
Dr. Blair currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Prostate Cancer Foundation, and he is on the Advisory Boards of the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University, the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation, and the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology.
Dr. Blair received a BS in Engineering from Princeton University and both Master’s and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. David L. Barker currently serves on the Boards of Directors of Cell Biosciences, Microchip Biotechnologies, and NextBio, and is a member of Illumina’s Scientific Advisory Board. Most recently, Dr. Barker held the position of Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at Illumina, and prior to that, Vice President and Chief Science Advisor at Amersham Biosciences. Dr. Barker also held senior positions, including Vice President of Research and Business Development, at Molecular Dynamics.
During his academic career, Dr. Barker conducted interdisciplinary research in neurobiology as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, Assistant Professor at the University of Oregon and Associate Professor at Oregon State University. Dr. Barker holds a Bachelor’s degree with honors in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Brandeis University.
Dr. Mostafa Ronaghi is Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Illumina, Inc., a leading publicly traded, life sciences company. Dr. Ronaghi joined Illumina following their acquisition of Avantome, Inc., which was his fourth life sciences start-up company. Immediately prior to joining Illumina, Dr. Ronaghi was a principal investigator at Stanford University where he focused on the development of novel molecular diagnostics tools. Dr. Ronaghi co-founded NextBio in 2004 and now serves as the Chairman of their Scientific Advisory Board. Prior to founding NextBio, Dr. Ronaghi co-founded two other successful companies. In November 2001 Dr. Ronaghi co-founded ParAllele BioScience. ParAllele developed and marketed a highly multiplexed technology for genetic testing and was acquired by Affymetrix in May 2005. In 1997 he co-founded Pyrosequencing AB (renamed to Biotage in 2003), a genomics company that develops, and markets, pyrosequencing systems and consumables. Pyrosequencing AB had a highly successful IPO in June 2000 on the Stockholm Stock Exchange.
Dr. Ronaghi earned his Ph.D. from the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. He holds more than 20 pending and issued patents and has written more than 50 peer-reviewed publications in journals and books. Dr. Ronaghi also serves on the Board of Directors of Microchip Biotechnologies and Aurora Biofuels.
André F. Marion retired from the Perkin-Elmer Corporation as President of the Applied Biosystems Division in 1995. Mr. Marion was the Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, and President of Applied Biosystems, Inc. at the time of its merger with Perkin-Elmer in 1993. As one of the founders of Applied Biosystems, Inc., André Marion served as its Chairman of the Board from October of 1987, President and Chief Executive Officer from January of 1986, Chief Operating Officer from May of 1983 to 1986 and was Vice President of Engineering from the founding year of the Company in June of 1981 to 1983.
Prior to founding Applied Biosystems, Mr. Marion held various Research and Development managerial positions at Hewlett-Packard. As a native of France, he holds an engineering degree from the French Ecole Nationale Supérieures d'Ingénieurs Arts et Métiers in both mechanical and electronic engineering. Mr. Marion now serves as director of several private companies.
Mr. Bill Byun is a Managing Director of Samsung Venture Investment team, based in Silicon Valley office. Mr. Byun currently serves as a board director of private companies in USA, China, Taiwan and Canada. Prior to Samsung Ventures, Mr. Byun was an operations executive with Philips, KLA-Tencor, and Applied Materials.
Mr. Byun received a BS in Mechanical Engineering from University of California at Santa Barbara and an MBA from Oxford University.
Dr. Stevan Jovanovich is President and CEO of Microchip Biotechnologies, a company he co-founded in 2003 to better optimize sample preparation for the life sciences. At MBI he has been the Principal Investigator on over $10 M of grants and contracts focused on DNA sequencing, biodefense, and forensics. He currently leads a growing team of talented professionals dedicated to commercializing the technology.
Dr. Jovanovich is an internationally recognized expert in microfluidics and an experienced global commercial leader. Before co-founding Microchip Biotechnologies, Dr. Jovanovich was Vice President of Global Research at Amersham Biosciences where he led a team of 120 scientists and engineers and drove multiple business projects across six international sites.
Prior positions include Science Director at Amersham Biosciences, Manager of Advanced Research at Molecular Dynamics, Staff Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Director of Microbiology at AbTox Inc, and founder of Molecular Solutions.
Dr. Jovanovich has proven expertise in microbiology, molecular genetics, microbial physiology, object-oriented programming, robotics, genomics, systems biology, and instrument and systems development. He is author of over 20 papers and an inventor on over 20 US patents. He holds Bachelor of Science degrees in Physics and Life Sciences from MIT, and a Ph.D. in Microbiology from University of California at Davis.
Dr. Dennis Harris is a co-founder of Microchip Biotechnologies and he is currently Chief Scientific Officer at Millipore. Dr. Harris is an experienced senior manager who has spent the majority of his career developing and implementing business strategies for life science companies to maximize their research and development efforts and ability to bring innovation to customers. In his various roles, he has initiated and led portfolio acquisitions and negotiated technology collaborations. Dr. Harris is a member of the Board of Directors for Biolog Inc.
Prior positions include Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at Serologicals Corporation, Executive Vice President of Research and Development at Vitra Bioscience, Senior Vice President at Aclara Biosciences, and Vice President of Research and Development at Amersham Pharmacia Biotech, now part of GE Healthcare. Dennis started his career as a development scientist of molecular biology kits and reagents. He also has extensive background in DNA sequencing and laboratory automation systems.
Dr. Harris earned his B.SC. Hons. in Biochemistry and Ph.D. from the University of Sussex, England. He has authored 17 papers.