LEXINGTON, Mass., Aug. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- RainDance Technologies, Inc., a provider of innovative microdroplet-based solutions for human health and disease research, today announced the appointment of Michael B. Olex as Vice President, System Development, effective immediately.
"As RainDance introduces its exciting RainStorm(TM) droplet-based technology to market, Mr. Olex will play a key leadership role in designing, developing, and integrating complete systems for commercialization, including instrumentation, consumables, and reagents," said Chris McNary, President and Chief Executive Officer, RainDance Technologies. "He will immediately focus on our Sequence Enrichment application for targeted genomic sequencing that will be launched later this year. With his deep experience in life sciences management, Mr. Olex will establish productive, efficient product transfer procedures from engineering to manufacturing, including the development of manufacturing processes," McNary said.
Olex joins RainDance from BioTrove, where he was Vice President, Manufacturing, and established the company's OpenArray(TM) consumable and instrumentation manufacturing departments. He also served as Senior Vice President at U.S. Genomics; President of International Light; Director, Business Projects at Applied Biosystems; and Vice President of Manufacturing at PerSeptive Biosystems. Olex holds a master of business administration degree from Case Western Reserve University, a master of science degree in electrical engineering from Cleveland State University, and a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Detroit.
About RainDance Technologies, Inc.
RainDance Technologies is a provider of innovative droplet-based solutions for human health and disease research. The speed and simplicity of the company's exciting new technology enable researchers to design experiments in ways that were previously unaffordable or unimaginable.
The company's technology produces picoliter-volume droplets at a rate of 10 million per hour. Each droplet is the functional equivalent of an individual test tube and can contain a single molecule, reaction, or cell. This versatile technology can adapt highly referenced assays for high-speed workflows with minimized process-induced bias or error.
RainDance's initial application will focus on the targeted resequencing of the human genome -- one of the fastest-growing segments of the $1 billion DNA sequencing market. This application will enable the high-resolution analysis of genetic variation between individuals and populations at a level unmatched by current methodology.
RainDance was founded in 2004 by scientists from Harvard University; the Medical Research Centre in Cambridge, England; and the ESPCI in Paris. The promise of this technology has attracted an outstanding Scientific Advisory Board. RainDance advisers include three Nobel Prize winners: Jean-Marie Lehn (Chemistry, 1987), Aaron Klug (Chemistry, 2002), and Sir Richard Roberts (Physiology or Medicine, 1993), as well as Sir Gregory Winter, joint head of the British Division of Protein and Nucleic Acids Chemistry at the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.
For more information, please visit http://www.raindancetechnologies.com.
CONTACT: Don Goncalves, +1-781-793-9380, dgoncalves@tizinc.com, or Cortney
Lusignan, +1-781-793-9380, clusignan@tizinc.com, both for RainDance
Technologies, Inc.
Web site: http://www.raindancetechnologies.com/