With over 30 years of diagnostics and medical device experience, Neil has a comprehensive knowledge of the global diagnostic and sequencing markets. He brings direct experience of commercial operations; product launches; product development; clinical, quality, and regulatory processes; and strategy development.
Recently, Neil served as CEO of IDbyDNA, which had a successful exit in June 2022 with an acquisition by Illumina. IDbyDNA was a precision metagenomic company headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah and the San Francisco Bay area of California. The company developed an innovative approach to infectious disease diagnostics that utilized next-generation sequencing (NGS).
Prior to joining IDbyDNA, Neil was the President of Roche Sequencing Solutions (RSS), where he oversaw all aspects of the business and managed a team of about 900 people. During his 5-year tenure, his team developed and launched over 20 products a year as part of the clinical work flow — analysis software and assays run on commercially available sequencers. The team was responsible for developing the nanopore sequencer.
Prior to his role as President of RSS, Neil held the role of Head of Business in Roche’s Molecular Diagnostic global business unit. During the eight years of his leadership, his team was responsible for over 120 diagnostic product launches (instruments, assays, software) with a principal focus on in vitro diagnostics (IVD) clinical market and a fully regulated process. These included the cobas® 8800/6800 high-throughput polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing instruments, the cobas® human papillomavirus (HPV) assay (the first FDA-approved assay for primary screening of cervical cancer) and multiple assays for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B virus (HBV), and hepatitis C virus (HCV).
Neil has been based in Europe and the United States during his career and had global responsibility, allowing him to develop knowledge of the global market conditions and environment in all major business geographies.
Neil holds a PhD in Marine Microbiology and an MS in Biology from Portsmouth Polytechnic, UK, as well as a BS in Biology from Nottingham Trent University, UK. He has been based in the San Francisco Bay area for over 20 years after relocating from the UK in 2001 with his wife Sarah, his daughter Jessica, and his son Cameron.