Keith L. Crandell, M.B.A.
Keith is a Co-Founder and Managing Director of ARCH Venture Partners, a 24 year-old seed and early stage venture capital partnership with offices in Chicago, Austin, San Francisco and Seattle.
Since 2004 Mr. Crandell has served as Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Illinois State Treasurer Technology Development Account, a fund-of-funds focused on Illinois private equity and venture capital partnerships. He has served as a Director of the National Venture Capital Association and the Governmental Affairs Committee. He also has been active with the IVCA since inception, recently serving as Chairman.
Prior to ARCH, Mr. Crandell worked with Hercules, Inc., a specialty chemical and polymer company. He holds an M.B.A. from The University of Chicago, an M.S. in Chemistry from the University of Texas at Arlington, and a B.S. in Chemistry and Mathematics from St. Lawrence University.
Caley Castelein, M.D.
Caley is a general partner of Kearny Venture Partners. He led investments in Rib-X, CVRx, CoTherix, QuatRx, Kai Pharmaceuticals and ViewRay. He is a board member of ViewRay, is a board observer at QuatRx Pharmaceuticals and CVRx, and was a board observer at CoTherix (acquired by Actelion).
Prior to becoming a venture capitalist in 2000, Caley received his M.D. from the University of California, San Francisco, with honors. During medical school, he ran a research program investigating the genetic causes of deafness and the application of gene therapy to treatment of hearing loss. The findings were published in leading journals including Nature Genetics.
After medical school, Caley completed a general surgery internship at the University of California, San Francisco. He received an A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard College.
Tom Willis, Ph.D., Chairman
Tom is the Chief Executive Officer and founder of Sequenta, Inc. a molecular diagnostics platform company focused on immune system profiling, and has served as the Chairman of Boreal’s board since June 2008.
Prior to founding Sequenta, Tom has been an entrepreneur in the biotech industry for the past decade. After receiving his Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University, in 1996, he joined the Stanford Genome Technology Center (SGTC) to work on DNA sequence analysis technologies. He held several positions at the SGTC including Associate Director in charge of technology development. While at SGTC, Tom was the co-inventor of the Molecular Inversion Probe technology for high throughput genotyping.
In 2001, Tom co-founded ParAllele BioScience to develop and commercialize this technology. As its founding CEO, he led ParAllele through two rounds of VC financing and grew the company to over 80 employees. In 2005 ParAllele was acquired by Affymetrix at which time Tom served in several management positions at Affymetrix. He left in 2007 to pursue new startup opportunities.
Nitin Sood
Chief Executive Officer
Nitin joined Boreal in June 2011 as Chief Executive Officer and brings an exceptional record of leadership and experience in the Life Sciences industry.
Previously, Nitin served as General Manager of the Automation and separately the Electrophoresis business units at Agilent Technologies where he led a global organization responsible for R&D, marketing, sales, support, and manufacturing functions for a portfolio of instruments and consumables based products. Under Nitin’s leadership, the businesses demonstrated substantial growth by launching new products for life science applications in Genomics, drug discovery and protein analysis. Prior to Agilent, Nitin led the R&D efforts for Applied Biosystem’s informatics business where he lead a team of engineers developing products targeted towards pharmaceutical QA/QC, forensics and chemical markets.
Nitin holds master’s degrees in both computer science and molecular biology.
Nicholas J. Naclerio, Ph.D.
Nick is the Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at Illumina, Inc and is responsible for all corporate business development activities, including strategic planning, licensing, corporate partnerships, and acquisitions.
Before joining Illumina in July 2010, Nick co-founded and was the Executive Chairman of Quanterix, an emerging diagnostics company based on a novel single molecule detection platform. Previously, Nick was Executive Chairman of True Materials and CEO of ParAllele BioScience, life science tools firms that were both acquired by Affymetrix, and was the founding Vice President & General Manager of Motorola Life Sciences. He also held leadership roles at Zyomyx Inc., Motorola Ventures, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the U.S. Air Force. Additionally, Nick has served on a number of corporate and institutional boards, including the SNP Consortium, Genometrix, Clinical Microsensors, Orchid Bioscience, and SEMATECH.
Nick received a B.S. (summa cum laude) in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Duke University, a Winston Churchill Fellowship in Materials Science to Cambridge University, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland.
Maria Pacella, CFA (Observer)
Maria Pacella is a Vice President, Investments with GrowthWorks Capital Ltd., one of Canada’s largest venture capital firms. Maria has been working with early stage high tech start-ups since 2000.
Maria sits on the boards of Genologics Life Sciences Software, Redlen Technologies, BuildDirect.com, and CopperLeaf Technologies. Prior to joining GrowthWorks Capital, Maria worked at a digital media firm assisting the company in operational activities and strategic initiatives. Maria also worked for Deutsche Bank Securities in mergers and acquisitions across a variety of industries including financial services and technology.
Maria has an undergraduate degree in Business Administration from Simon Fraser University and is a Chartered Financial Analyst. Maria is a member of the CFA Institute and is on the Board of Directors for CFA Vancouver.
Andre Marziali, Ph.D.
Founder, President and Chief Scientific Officer
A leading innovator, educator, and entrepreneur with over 15 years’ experience in developing tools for life science research and technologies for nucleic acid analysis, Andre founded Boreal Genomics with colleagues from the University of British Columbia in 2007.
Andre received his B.A.Sc. in Engineering Physics from UBC in 1989, and his Ph.D. in Physics from Stanford University in 1994. He subsequently worked for several years with Dr. Ron Davis, in the Stanford DNA Sequencing Technology Center, developing instruments for DNA sequencing and sample purification. He returned to Canada in 1998, as an Assistant Professor at University of British Columbia in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, where he founded the Applied Biophysics Laboratory and the Genome BC Technology Development Platform. In 2005 he was appointed Director of the Engineering Physics program at UBC.
In 2004, Andre co-invented the concept of using synchronous mobility perturbations to create divergent velocity fields for selective focusing of nucleic acids, the technology which forms the basis for Boreal’s platform. He has been awarded the 2004 BC Innovation Council – Young Innovator award, the 2007 Association for Lab Automation Innovation Award, and the 2011 Life Science BC Award for Innovation and Achievement.
