Leadership

James A. D. Smith, Chief Executive Officer. James A. D. Smith is an experienced biotech and pharmaceutical executive and entrepreneur, with over 25 years of leadership experience in both public and private companies. Jim has previously served as CEO and a director of Virolab, a company developing therapeutic vaccines for cancerous and pre-cancerous cervical lesions caused by HPV. Before that he served as President, CEO and a director of Genelabs Technologies, a Nasdaq-listed biopharmaceutical company that is now a wholly-owned division of GlaxoSmithKline. Jim started his career at ICN Pharmaceuticals, now known as Valeant Pharmaceuticals, where he served in a variety of executive capacities including Director of worldwide business development.

Raphael Lehrer, Ph.D., Founder and Chief Scientist. Before founding GeneKey, Raphael Lehrer directed CollabRx ONE, the personalized oncology research service for CollabRx. Dr. Lehrer was the lead inventor of the methodology pioneered by CollabRx. Previously, Dr. Lehrer was the Executive Director of Strategic Alliances for Gene Logic's Drug Repositioning and Selection Business where he negotiated alliances with pharmaceutical companies to discover new therapeutic uses for their compounds that have failed in late-stage clinical trials. In earlier positions at Gene Logic, he played a key role in formulating strategy for the company; evaluating, acquiring, and integrating the preclinical CRO business; and in adding service-based offerings to Gene Logic's toxicogenomics business. Prior to joining Gene Logic, Dr. Lehrer worked at The Boston Consulting Group, where he supported top-ten pharmaceutical clients on a variety of R&D and commercial issues, including formulating licensing strategies, clinical development process design, regulatory processes, post-merger integration, and outsourcing strategies. Additionally, Dr. Lehrer was a key contributor to BCG's positioning paper on the impact of genomics on pharmaceutical R&D. Dr. Lehrer holds a B.S. degree in Physics from Yale University and a Ph.D. degree in Physics from Harvard University, where he was awarded the Maurice Goldhaber Prize for best theoretical physics student.