Board Members

Andy Schwab, 5AM Ventures

Andrew J. Schwab is a founder and Managing Partner of 5AM Ventures. Prior to founding 5AM Ventures in 2002, Mr. Schwab was a Principal at Bay City Capital (BCC). After joining BCC in 1999, he led the firm's investment and merchant banking activities for such companies as Cubist Pharmaceuticals, Metabolex, PTC Therapeutics, Symyx and Syrrx. Prior to joining BCC, Mr. Schwab was Vice President of Business Development at Digital Gene Technologies and a Vice President in the life science investment banking group of Montgomery Securities. At 5AM, he has led the firm's investments in and served on the Boards of Directors of Anaphore, DVS Sciences, Flexion Therapeutics, Ikaria, Ilypsa (acquired by Amgen), Miikana (acquired by EntreMed), Panomics (acquired by Affymetrix), Synosia (Acquired by Biotie) and Viveve. Mr. Schwab received a B.S. with Honors in Genetics & Ethics from Davidson College.Mr. Schwab is based in the Menlo Park, CA office.

Bill Burkoth, Pfizer Ventures

Mr. Burkoth is currently a Senior Director in Pfizer Ventures, the venture capital arm of Pfizer Inc. Since joining Pfizer in early 2004, Mr. Burkoth has played an instrumental role in numerous new Pfizer venture investments, including Avid Radiopharmaceuticals (acquired by Eli Lilly), Evolution Benefits (acquired by Genstar Capital), and HandyLab (acquired by Becton Dickinson).  Mr. Burkoth currently serves on the Board of Directors of Aureon Biosciences, DVS Sciences and Novocure, and as a board observer of Clovis Oncology, HD Biosciences, M2S, and Nodality.  Prior to joining Pfizer, Mr. Burkoth worked in Business Development at Galileo Pharmaceuticals and at IntraBiotics Pharmaceuticals. Prior to his roles in business development, Bill was an analyst at Bay City Capital, a leading life sciences venture capital firm. At Bay City, he evaluated numerous investment opportunities in biopharmaceuticals and assisted in the management of several portfolio companies. Mr. Burkoth received a BA in chemistry from Whitman College and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Frank Witney, Ph.D., Affymetrix President and CEO

Dr. Frank Witney is the CEO of Affymetrix, Inc. located in Sunnyvale, effective July 1, 2011. Dr. Witney brings to Affymetrix more than 20 years of experience as a leader and innovator in the life science industry, including a previous leadership position at Affymetrix. Prior to re-joining Affymetrix, Dr. Witney was appointed Dionex Corporation's President and Chief Executive Officer in May 2009. Before that, he was Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at Affymetrix, Inc., where he integrated the Panomics business into Affymetrix. He served as President and CEO of Panomics, Inc. (formerly Genospectra, Inc.) from July 2002 to December 2008. In May 2011 Dionex was acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific. His previous background included experience as the President of Drug Discovery Tools for PerkinElmer Life Sciences, the President and COO of Packard BioScience, and varied management positions at Bio-Rad Laboratories.Frank was a post-doctoral fellow at the National Institute of Health and holds a doctorate in molecular and cell biology from Indiana University.

Neil Reid, co-founder of Sciex, MDS Proteomics

Dr. Reid has over 30 years entrepreneurial and operational experience as an executive in the Scientific Instrumentation and Life Sciences industries. Dr. Reid was a co-founder of Sciex in 1975 and was instrumental in the sale of Sciex to MDS Inc. in 1981. Over the next 20-year period, Dr. Reid helped to grow MDS Sciex into a global leader with over $350m in sales, establishing joint venture agreements with PerkinElmer and Applied BioSystems International. Dr. Reid has served on various Life Sciences and High Tech company boards, both public and private.

Joseph Victor - President and CEO

As President and Chief Executive Officer based in the corporate headquarters in Sunnyvale, CA, Mr. Victor sets the corporate strategy for DVS. Mr. Victor has more than 25 years of experience fostering product innovation and building value for customers, shareholders, and employees. Most recently, Mr. Victor was President and CEO of Applied Precision Inc., a manufacturer of high end microscopy systems for life sciences research and drug development acquired by GE Healthcare in 2011. Before that he drove significant sales growth, new product development and overall profitability of the Applied Precision business in the roles of President, Sr. VP Life Sciences, VP R&D and Operations, and VP R&D. Prior to Applied Precision, Mr. Victor held various executive management and technical positions in the aviation, high technology, and energy markets. Mr. Victor holds an MBA from UCLA and MS and BS degrees in engineering from the University of Washington.

Scott Tanner – Chief Technology Officer, General Manager (Canadian operations) and Co-Founder

Dr. Tanner is based in the Canadian operations located in Toronto, Ontario and provides the focus on research and development of the mass cytometry technology platform at DVS Sciences. A co-founder of DVS, he led the company through the introduction of the company's first products into the marketplace, including the CyTOF® instrument platform and the MAXPAR® reagents line. Dr. Tanner retains a faculty appointment at the University of Toronto, managing an international collaboration to advance the mass cytometry technology. Prior to the establishment of DVS in 2004, Dr. Tanner was Principal Scientist with MDS Sciex, the analytical technologies division of MDS Inc. In his 25 years at Sciex, Dr. Tanner developed and helped to commercialize a string of mass spectrometry products. Dr. Tanner received the 2011 University of Toronto Inventor of the Year Award for Biomedical and Life Sciences, the 2011 ThermoFisher Scientific Spectroscopy Award, the 2003 W.A.E. McBryde medal from the Canadian Chemical Society, and the 2001 Manning Innovation Foundation Award of Distinction. Dr. Tanner completed his PhD in Physical Chemistry at York University in Toronto.

Scientific Advisory Board

Garry Nolan, Professor, Stanford University

Dr. Nolan is the Rachford and Carlota A. Harris Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine. He has published over 150 articles and is the holder of 19 US patents, and has been honored as one of the top 25 inventors at Stanford University.  He trained with Leonard Herzenberg (for his Ph.D.) and Nobel Prize winner Dr. David Baltimore (for postdoctoral work for the first cloning/characterization of NF-kB p65/RelA).  Dr. Nolan was the founder of Rigel Inc. (NASDAQ: RIGL), and Nodality, Inc., a diagnostics development company and serves on the Boards of Directors of BINA (a computational informatics enterprise) and PrognosDx (a diagnostics company focusing on epigenetics).    He is an outspoken proponent of translating public investment in basic research to serve the public good.   His areas of research include hematopoiesis, cancer and leukemia, autoimmunity and inflammation, and computational approaches for network and systems immunology.  His laboratory has already begun a large scale mapping of the hematopoietic hierarchy in healthy human bone marrow at an unprecedented level of detail.  Dr. Nolan's efforts are to enable a deeper understanding not only of normal immune function, but also detailed substructures of leukemias and lymphomas in a manner never before seen—which will enable wholly new approaches to managing disease and clinical outcomes.