SAN DIEGO, Aug. 26, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bionano Genomics, Inc. (BNGO) announced today that Christopher Stewart will join Bionano as its Chief Financial Officer, effective September 1, 2020. Chris has a breadth of experience in finance, accounting, and strategic planning for commercial-stage operating businesses. He has overseen financial management for technology companies with both product and service models. Chris is also experienced in leading various business functions, including finance, IT, human resources, and investor relations, and has demonstrated leadership through major financing events and acquisitions. Additionally, he has in-depth operational knowledge of the semiconductor industry, which utilizes similar manufacturing processes and types of manufacturing partners that are used to make Saphyr chips. Scaling Saphyr consumable production and use is a cornerstone of Bionano’s growth plans, and improving the margins of Saphyr consumables is a key to Bionano’s path to profitability. We believe Chris’ experience in scaling revenues in high-growth tech companies and the semiconductor industry will contribute greatly to his service to Bionano as its Chief Financial Officer, and that this expertise will be instrumental to executing our business plan, including global expansion of our Saphyr business and service offering.
Chris joins Bionano most recently from Tesla, where he served as Head of the Maxwell Ultracapacitors business unit after Maxwell Technology was acquired by Tesla. Prior to this acquisition, he served as Vice President of Finance & Information Technology at Maxwell Technologies, a then publicly traded company. Prior to Maxwell Technologies, he served as Vice President, Finance at Entropic Communications, a publicly traded company and a leader in semiconductor solutions and as Chief Financial Officer of V-ENABLE (now xAD), a leader in targeted mobile advertising. Chris has demonstrated extensive mergers and acquisition experience as well as experience with public finance and financial reporting.
Erik Holmlin, PhD, CEO of Bionano Genomics commented: “We are thrilled to have Chris Stewart join us as Chief Financial Officer. He is a hands-on finance executive with over 20 years of experience at companies ranging from startups to large public companies. Importantly, he is familiar with both products and services and has a very strong finance and operations background. He arrives at a perfect time, as we just completed our acquisition of Lineagen and brought Alka Chaubey on board as our Chief Medical Officer, setting us up for the next phase in Bionano’s growth. His leadership in scaling high-growth tech companies will be invaluable as Bionano embarks on our next phase of global expansion of our Saphyr, consumables and services business and as we strive to make Saphyr the future of digital cytogenetics.”
About Bionano Genomics
Bionano is a genome analysis company providing tools and services based on its Saphyr system to scientists and clinicians conducting genetic research and patient testing, and providing diagnostic testing for those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other neurodevelopmental disabilities through its Lineagen business. Bionano’s Saphyr system is a platform for ultra-sensitive and ultra-specific structural variation detection that enables researchers and clinicians to accelerate the search for new diagnostics and therapeutic targets and to streamline the study of changes in chromosomes, which is known as cytogenetics. The Saphyr system is comprised of an instrument, chip consumables, reagents and a suite of data analysis tools, and genome analysis services to provide access to data generated by the Saphyr system for researchers who prefer not to adopt the Saphyr system in their labs. Lineagen has been providing genetic testing services to families and their healthcare providers for over nine years and has performed over 65,000 tests for those with neurodevelopmental concerns. For more information, visit www.bionanogenomics.com or www.lineagen.com.
