Andrzej Wozniak
Chief Software Architect
Mr. Wozniak is responsible for the development of the high performance computing technology underlying GenomeQuest. With the company since 2001, Mr. Wozniak previously held a senior position in the simulation and development of Itanium based multi-processor architectures at Bull company in France. He also was a researcher in computing architectures, algorithm optimization, and video conferencing codecs at the French National Research Institute for Computer Science and Control (INRIA), and holds several patents in technology related fields. This extensive experience in hardware and software development is essential for the optimization of search algorithms and management of large amounts of sequence data.
Denis Bayada
Senior Field Application Scientist
Dr. Bayada is a senior field application scientist at GenomeQuest, applying his extensive chemoinformatics and genomics-based drug discovery experience to the solution of problems faced by research organizations in IP as well as molecular biology.
Dr. Bayada’s PhD. in Chemistry centered on the computational analysis of molecules, an experience he was able to leverage as a senior researcher at NV Organon/Akzo Nobel, where he was an integral member of their early bioinformatics team. Dr. Bayada was also a senior researcher at the French national sequencing center, Genoscope/CEA where his work focused on the sequencing and analysis of bacterial DNA.
With an extensive background in chemoinformatics and genomics-based drug discovery spanning nearly two decades, Dr. Bayada transforms customer feedback into effective workflow refinements, especially in variant detection and IP.
Jun Wan
Engineering Product Manager
As Engineering Product Manager, Mr. Wan relies on his considerable computer science experience and biology background to manage the continuous development of the GenomeQuest platform. Leading a team of developers, Mr. Wan takes fundamental ideas on the product development road map and turns them into realities.
With Masters Degrees in both Biology and Computer Science, Mr. Wan was a senior Bioinformatics software developer at Phylos before coming to GenomeQuest in 2003. Mr. Wan has been instrumental in the development of expanded capabilities of GenomeQuest’s platform and IP sequence database.
Mr. Wan’s biology background allows him to understand the problems faced by researchers. His extensive experience with state-of-the-art software development enables him to realize the technical solutions to those problems.
Julien Doudement
Field Application Scientist
As a field application scientist, Mr. Doudement, with Masters Degrees in both Biology and Bioinformatics, combines his extensive biological research experience with his deep knowledge of the GenomeQuest core technology to successfully bridge research needs and GenomeQuest’s workflow capabilities.
While engaged in research focused on gene expression in genetic diseases, Mr. Doudement became fascinated with the emerging field of bioinformatics. At Servier Laboratories, he immersed himself in the daily application of information technology to biological problems in drug discovery. Coming to GenomeQuest in France in 2005, Mr. Doudement contributed to the ongoing development of the company’s core technology.
In 2005, Mr. Doudement came to GenomeQuest in the US as a field application scientist, helping customers handle their sequence data, and developing new customer-specific tools and capabilities within the GenomeQuest platform. With his rich research background in gene expression, Mr. Doudement is also the principal creator and communicator of GenomeQuest’s RNA-Seq workflow.
Mr. Doudement brings energy, motivation, biological research acumen, and a deep knowledge of GenomeQuest’s core technology to bear on the solutions researchers require to advance their projects.
John Knepper
Field Application Scientist
As a field application scientist, Mr. Knepper, with a B.S. in Bioinformatics, combines his extensive bioinformatics experience with the GenomeQuest sequence database management (SDM) system to aid users in various NGS issues and analyses.
As a KECK researcher at St. Edward’s University, Mr. Knepper aided in the analysis of Cytokine-Antibody arrays in order to further understand the functionality of the alpha-crystallin family of heat shock proteins in the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Upon graduation, Mr. Knepper worked with the Oral Pathogen database at Los Alamos National Labs, the Biosciences Division, and aided in the curation and annotation of large amounts of data pertaining to the normal flora of the human mouth.
In 2009, Mr. Knepper accepted responsibilities as the sole bioinformatician at the McDermott Sequencing Core, a part of the McDermott Center for Human Growth and Development at UT Southwestern, and specialized in the analysis of NGS data in support of a number of sequencing applications such as RNA-Seq, ChIP-Seq, Exon Capture, and Whole Genome re-sequencing. Here, he supported two SOLiD 4 sequencing platforms for a large number of private investigators at the university, and automated all the analyses from start to finish on a High Performance Computing (HPC) cluster managed by the Sun Grid Engine (SGE).
Currently, Mr. Knepper is finishing the final four courses of his M.S. in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (BCBM) from the University of Texas at Dallas during his evenings, and is anticipating graduation in the Spring of 2012.
Mr. Knepper is inspired by his passion for bioinformatics and the various ‘omics’ fields, and hopes to enhance the research in these fields through his work at GenomeQuest.
Nabil Hafez
Director, Clinical Strategy
Nabil has spent over a decade working on solving problems in genomics, bioinformatics, and subsequently next generation sequencing technologies. Spending eight years at the Whitehead Institute for Genome Research, later renamed the Broad Institute, he managed a team working on the finishing of chromosomes 8, 11, 15, 17, and 18 in support of the Human Genome Project.
Nabil also led a team to successful completion of the Mouse Genome Project. As next generation sequencing technologies began to emerge, he transitioned to the Technology Development Group at the Broad Institute working with NGS vendors’ products from their infancy and helping develop these early prototypes into genome center production scale platforms.
Nabil went on to found Seqwise LLC, a next generation sequencing technology consulting company with several of his colleagues to help laboratories, institutes, startups, and pharmaceutical companies transition to next generation sequencing and cope with the deluge of data from these technologies.
Nabil is intimately familiar with all components of next generation sequencing and specializes in bioinformatics and data & statistical analysis of large data sets. Nabil joined GenomeQuest to bring his extensive next generation sequencing knowledge and expertise to bear on fulfilling the full promise of genomics and help enable personalized medicine through clinical diagnostics. Nabil holds an M.B.A from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, a M.S. in Bioinformatics from Brandeis University, and a B.S in Biology from Binghamton University.
