Our Team

The Second Genome team is comprised of veterans of the life science and microbiome research market, and includes strong domain expertise in bringing molecular diagnostics and therapeutics to market.

Peter DiLaura, President & CEO
Peter has more than 15 years experience in the life sciences industry with leadership roles at Ingenuity Systems, Chemdex/Ventro and IBM, and as a consultant at The Wilkerson Group. He has a BS in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Janet Warrington PhD, Co-Founder & SVP, Operations and Development
Janet has more than 20 years in biotechnology and molecular diagnostics R&D experience. She helped build Affymetrix serving as VP of R&D, Molecular Diagnostics. She received a Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry from UC Irvine, and was a DOE Postdoctoral Scholar in Genetics at Stanford University.

Todd DeSantis, Co-Founder & Head of Bioinformatics: Todd is the chief architect for PhyloChip probe design and the PhyloChip analysis algorithms. He manages all bioinformatics work and oversees the planning, performance and interpretation of projects and the production of data reports.

Jesse Kennedy, Director of Sales & Business Development: Jesse has more than 10 years in sales and support roles in the biotech industry bringing emerging products to market. She was an early member of the Affymetrix team. She received a B.A. from Smith College.

Rachel Steger, Director of Marketing: Rachel manages strategic marketing and communications with experience across research and clinical segments of the life science industry. She received a B.S. from Rice University and a M.S. from UC Berkeley in Molecular and Cell Biology.

Justin Kuczynski, Staff Scientist, Informatics: Justin works on bioinformatics tool development and validation, and he performs analysis and interpretation of microbiome data. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado where he co-developed QIIME, a microbial community analysis software package.

Christel Chehoud, Scientific Support Specialist: Christel works closely with clients to capture project information and carry out bioinformatics analysis. She received an A.B. in Molecular Biology from Princeton University.

 

Board of Directors & Key Advisors

Corey S. Goodman, Ph.D., Co-Founder & Chair of the Board: former President of Pfizer’s Biotherapeutics and Bioinnovation Center; co-founder Exelixis and Renovis, and CEO of Renovis; Managing Director and co-founder, venBio; Professor UCSF; Chair of Board: Limerick, iPierian, and Oligasis; member of Board: NeuroTherapeutics and Mirna; elected member of the National Academy of Sciences. Former professor at UC Berkeley, Stanford and a HHMI Investigator.

Gary Andersen, Ph.D., Co-Founder & Chair, Scientific Advisory Board: Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs and Group Leader for Molecular and Microbial Ecology; inventor of the PhyloChip™ technology.

Mike Carusi, Board Member: General Partner at Advanced Technology Ventures. His investments include Altura Medical, Ardian (acquired by Medtronic), EndoGastric Solutions, GI Dynamics, GluMetrics, NeuroVista, Plexxikon (acquired by Daiichi Sankyo), PowerVision, TranS1 (NASDAQ: TSON), and MicroVention (acquired by Terumo).

Peter Gardner, Board Member: Managing Director with Wavepoint Ventures. He has served on the boards of more than a dozen early-stage, venture-backed technology companies.

Jason Lettmann, Board Member: Principal at Morgenthaler Ventures. He serves on the Board of Relievant Medsystems, is a co-founder and on the Board of Tarsus Medical, and is a Board observer at Ardian (acquired by Medtronic), Cabochon Aesthetics, The Foundry and Moximed.

Matt Winkler, Ph.D., Board Member: CEO of molecular diagnostics company Asuragen and founder of Ambion, a molecular biology tool company; founded Mirna Therapeutics as a carve-out of Asuragen, to develop cancer therapeutics based on miRNA; former professor at UT Austin.