Leadership

Kevin Munnelly, President and CEO

Kevin has over 20 years’ experience with molecular biology, chemistry, software, instrument development, and statistical analysis. Prior to Gen9, he was a Leader and General Manager in the Next Generation qPCR business at Life Technologies where he was responsible for a multimillion dollar business segment as well as development of custom genomics solutions through collaborations with end user scientists. Prior to Life Technologies, Kevin was Vice President and General Manager of BioTrove, Inc, which was acquired by Life Technologies in 2009. In addition Kevin was a Senior Manager at Millennium Pharmaceuticals. He holds an A.B. with honors from Bowdoin College in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and an MBA in Entrepreneurship, Magna Cum Laude, from Babson College.

Joseph Jacobson, Co-Founder, Executive Chairman and CTO

Joe is Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he is co-PI of the Center for Bits and Atoms and leads the Molecular Machine Group. His group at MIT is focused on pioneering the field of Avogadro Scale Engineering with applications in novel computing machines and synthetic biology. Joe received his PhD in Physics from MIT and was a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford in the area of Quantum Optics. He is the recipient of a 1999 Technology Review TR100 Award for Innovation, The 2000 Gutenberg Prize and a 2001 Discover Award. He has authored over 70 peer reviewed papers and conference proceedings in the fields of femotosecond lasers, quantum optics, molecular electronics, nano-chemistry and synthetic DNA. In the private sector Joe was co-founder of E Ink, Kovio and Gen9 and was a founding board member of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC).

David K. Stone, Chief Financial Officer

David joined Gen9 in July 2012. He is the Founder and Managing Director of Liberty Tree Advisors. In addition, he is an independent director of Seahorse Bioscience, a laboratory instrument company and was an independent director and Chairman of Oscient Pharmaceuticals, a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company. David spent seven years as a Managing Director and Partner at Flagship Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on creating, financing, and building innovative companies in the Life Science and Technology sectors. David earned a B.S. in Microbiology from Colorado State University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Jennifer A. Camacho, Chief Legal Officer

Ms. Camacho joined Gen9 from the Boston office of Greenberg Traurig, LLP, where she was a partner focused on intellectual property. In this capacity, she represented clients in synthetic biology, industrial biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, regenerative medicine, protein engineering, chemistry, and biofuels, among others. Prior, Ms. Camacho was a partner at the New York-based law firm of Proskauer Rose LLP.  Her corporate experience includes vice president of IP and Chief Patent Counsel at Codon Devices. Camacho is routinely recognized for her leadership and work, particularly in the life sciences and emerging technology sectors. She was named an “IP Star” by Managing Intellectual Property magazine and was awarded the Tech Luminary and Innovation All-Star Award by the Boston Business Journal and Mass High Tech. She is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Boston College Law School.

Aaron Zucker, VP of Strategy & Corporate Development

Aaron joined Gen9 in November of 2009 as the Founding VP of Business Development leading the growth of many of the business aspects of Gen9’s operations including fund raising, finance, sales and marketing. Since June 2013 Aaron leads the strategy and corporate development as well as fund raising and legal aspects of Gen9’s operations. Aaron trained as a lawyer in Israel where he practiced corporate, commercial and intellectual property law, Aaron is a member of the Israeli Bar Association. Aaron holds an L.L.B. from The Hebrew University in Jerusalem and an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management.

Christopher Bruce, VP of Global Sales

Christopher joined Gen9 after working for Cell Signaling Technology for 7 years, most recently as the Sr. Director of Sales where he developed Sales presence in the US and facilitated the establishment of three international offices to expand CST’s international Sales and Marketing reach. Christopher brings more than 25 years of Sales and Sales leadership experience to Gen9. Prior to CST Christopher worked for Invitrogen (Life Technologies), and Pierce (Thermo Fisher). He holds a B.S. from SUNY Stony Brook in Biological Sciences.

Devin Leake, VP of R&D and Operations

Devin hails from Thermo Fisher Scientific, where he spent 11 years, most recently as the Global Director of Molecular Biology R&D, overseeing research in enzyme development and nucleic acid chemistry and biology. Initially, Devin worked at Dharmacon, an RNA synthesis company, until being acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific. He has over 100 issued patents and over 30 publications in peer-reviewed journals. Devin holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the SUNY Stony Brook.

Andrew Bond, Senior Director of Marketing and Customer Support

Andrew joined Gen9 in August of 2012 and leads our Marketing, Customer Support and Product Management efforts. Prior to Gen9, Andrew worked at PrimeraDx, leading the Marketing, Support and Product Management teams; and has had stints at Life Technologies, BioTrove, Invitrogen, Xpogen and did his post doctoral work with Abbott. Andrew holds a PhD in Molecular Genetics from the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Scientific Advisory Board

David Baker, University of Washington

Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Washington; Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator; elected to the National Academy of Sciences; and elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. David first became interested in the problem of protein folding while still an undergraduate at Harvard. He has been instrumental in using distributed computing to solve structures of proteins with the Rosetta and Foldit programs. Currently, David’s research focus is on prediction and design of protein structures. Specifically, focusing on designing proteins with new functions.

George Church, Harvard Medical School

Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Director of the Center for Computational Genetics. George’s 1984 Harvard dissertation included the first direct genomic sequencing method, molecular multiplexing tags, which led to automation and software used at Genome Therapeutics Corp. for the first commercial genome sequence, Helicobacter. This multiplex solid-phase sequencing evolved into polonies (1999), ABI-SOLiD (2005) and open-source Polonator.org (2007). Innovations in DNA reading, writing & allele replacement in cells led to current research and commercialization in human genomics (Complete Genomics, PersonalGenomes.org, 23andme, Knome) and synthetic biology (SynBERC, Joule, LS9).

Chris Emig, Stanford University

Chris is an academic researcher focused on technologies for extremely rapid synthesis of DNA. He is also an industry consultant in the areas of DNA synthesis, lab automation, informatics and computational biology. Previously, he was a project manager at Codon Devices where he led the development of novel DNA synthesis technologies, library construction, and metabolic engineering. His work in the Molecular Machines Group at the MIT Medical Lab demonstrated a novel technique for low cost DNA microarray synthesis utilizing photoelectrochemistry. Chris is currently a PhD candidate in Stanford’s Department of Bioengineering.

Drew Endy, Stanford University

Drew Endy serves on the Stanford Bioengineering faculty and as board president of the BioBricks Foundation (BBF). He helped start the International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) competition, the Registry of Standard Biological Parts, the BIOFAB, the SB#.0 conference series, and the US Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC). He is a member of the US NAS Committee on Science, Technology, & Law (CSTL) and is nominated to the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB). His lab at Stanford works on scaling the composition and reliability of engineered biological systems.

Joseph M. Jacobson, MIT

Joe is Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he is co-PI of the Center for Bits and Atoms and leads the Molecular Machine Group. His group at MIT is focused on pioneering the field of Avogadro Scale Engineering with applications in novel computing machines and synthetic biology. Joe received his PhD in Physics from MIT and was a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford in the area of Quantum Optics. He is the recipient of a 1999 Technology Review TR100 Award for Innovation, The 2000 Gutenberg Prize and a 2001 Discover Award. He has authored over 70 peer reviewed papers and conference proceedings in the fields of femotosecond lasers, quantum optics, molecular electronics, nano-chemistry and synthetic DNA. In the private sector Joe was co-founder of E Ink, Kovio and Gen9 and was a founding board member of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC).

Michael Jewett, Northwestern

Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Northwestern University; Named 2011 Packard Fellow. Michael is a member of the SynBio 6.0 executive planning team, was selected as DARPA Young Faculty Award recipient, and as the Agilent Early Career Professor Award. Michael’s research focus is on synthetic biology using cell-free systems to reduce complexity and focus on production of high value proteins that are difficult to produce using traditional in vivo systems.

Sri Kosuri, Harvard Medical School

Sri is currently a Staff Scientist in the Synthetic Biology Platform at the Wyss Institute. He was a postdoc in George Church’s lab in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute from 2009-2011. He is also on the Board of Directors for OpenWetWare. He previously did a short postdoctoral stint in Mike Laub’s lab working on cell cycle in Caulobacter crescentus. Prior to the Laub lab, he was a graduate student in Drew Endy’s lab and worked on understanding the development of a simple virus (T7) that infects E. coli.

Jay Shendure, University of Washington

Associate Professor, Genome Sciences, University of Washington. His 2005 PhD included one of the first successful demonstrations of massively parallel or next generation DNA sequencing. His research group in Seattle has made significant contributions to technologies including exome sequencing and its application to identify the basis of Mendelian disorders and autism spectrum disorders; haplotype-resolved genome sequencing; non-invasive, fetal genome sequencing; massively parallel functional analysis of cis-regulatory elements; and “dialout PCR”. He is the recipient of the 2006 TR35 Young Innovator Award from MIT Technology Review and the 2012 Curt Stern Award from the American Society of Human Genetics.

Founders

Joseph Jacobson

Joe is Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he is co-PI of the Center for Bits and Atoms and leads the Molecular Machine Group. His group at MIT is focused on pioneering the field of Avogadro Scale Engineering with applications in novel computing machines and synthetic biology. Joe received his PhD in Physics from MIT and was a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford in the area of Quantum Optics. He is the recipient of a 1999 Technology Review TR100 Award for Innovation, The 2000 Gutenberg Prize and a 2001 Discover Award. He has authored over 70 peer reviewed papers and conference proceedings in the fields of femotosecond lasers, quantum optics, molecular electronics, nano-chemistry and synthetic DNA. In the private sector Joe was co-founder of E Ink, Kovio and Gen9 and was a founding board member of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC).

George Church

Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Director of the Center for Computational Genetics. 1984 Harvard PhD included the first direct genomic sequencing method, molecular multiplexing tags, which lead to automation & software used at Genome Therapeutics Corp. for the first commercial genome sequence — pathogen, Helicobacter in 1994. This multiplex solid-phase sequencing evolved into polonies (1999), ABI-SOLiD (2005) & open-source Polonator.org (2007). Innovations in DNA reading, writing & allele replacement in cells lead to current research & commercialization in human genomics (Complete Genomics, PersonalGenomes.org, 23andme, Knome), synthetic biology (SynBERC, Joule, LS9) & new ethics/security strategies.

Drew Endy

Drew serves on the Stanford Bioengineering faculty and as board president of the BioBricks Foundation (BBF). He helped start the International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) competition, the Registry of Standard Biological Parts, the SB#.0 conference series, and the US Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC). He is a member of the US NAS Committee on Science, Technology, & Law (CSTL) and is nominated to the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB). His lab at Stanford works on scaling the composition and reliability of engineered biological systems. His passions are to make biology ever-easier to engineer and to ensure that the applications of biotechnology remain overwhelmingly constructive.