Park News
6 July 2006
Solexa Names Richard H. Lussier Vice President, Sales and Field Operations
HAYWARD, Calif. and Cambridge, UK (July 5, 2006) – Solexa, Inc. (Nasdaq: SLXA) today announced the appointment of Richard H. Lussier to the newly created position of vice president, sales and field operations. Mr. Lussier will be responsible for hiring and managing a field organization to support commercial sales of the Solexa Genome Analysis System to a broad target market, including large genome centers, core laboratories at universities and government institutions, commercial sequencing enterprises, and pharmaceutical and biotech companies.
Rich has the vision, organizational expertise and industry experience to assume this important role,” said John West, chief executive officer of Solexa. We will call upon his prior success in implementing global sales strategies as we prepare for the broad release of our groundbreaking genetic analysis system. We are delighted to welcome him to our management team.
Mr. Lussier brings to Solexa over 20 years of industry experience, including 12 years with Applied Biosystems. Mr. Lussier was president and general manager of Applied Biosystems Japan for a five-year period that saw record sales of DNA sequencing instruments and related consumables. Prior to his appointment as president of Applied Biosystems Japan, Mr. Lussier held positions of increasing responsibility in the US, Japanese and Asian field organizations of Applied Biosystems. He also managed the Asia-Pacific operations for Celera Genomics. Mr. Lussier also held global field operations management positions with MJ Research (now part of BioRad Inc.) and, most recently, with Fluidigm Corporation, where he was senior vice president of field operations.
Solexa has made remarkable progress in the past year to bring to market technology that could transform genetic analysis, said Mr. Lussier. I’m very excited about joining this world class management team and the opportunity to build an effective field organization to commercialize this technology.
Mr. Lussier is a native of Massachusetts and holds an MBA from Temple University, conducted post graduate studies in molecular biology at the University of Vermont, where he used one of the first automated DNA sequencers installed in the US, and received a BS in biology and chemistry from Rhode Island College.