Management Team
Experienced Leadership
Mona Chadha
Chief Operating Officer; Executive Vice President, Marketing & Business Development, and Secretary; Member, Office of the President
Ms. Chadha has over 20 years of global product commercialization experience at top-tier biotechnology/biopharmaceutical companies. She has been employed by the Company since July 2006, first as Vice President of Marketing and Business Development and in 2009 promoted to Chief Operating Officer, EVP of Marketing and Business Development. In that capacity Ms. Chadha develops the Company’s business strategy (including product definition, market development and commercialization strategy for its SmartChip™ Real Time PCR System), assists with capital-raising activities and hiring of key scientific personnel, defines product strategy, key collaborations and strategic alliances.
From July 2003 through July 2006, Ms. Chadha was associate director and heading the corporate marketing and technology marketing function at Nektar Therapeutics, where she led the company’s repositioning and branding efforts and was involved with marketing of the company’s pulmonary and PEGylation technologies. Prior to that, she spent eight and a half years with Applied Biosystems Group (Applera Corporation) in several senior positions, including Product Manager, Senior Product Manager and Product Line Manager, and was involved with commercializing PCR systems, including a real time PCR and high throughput screening system. Before joining Applied Biosystems, she was with CLONTECH Laboratories, Inc., as a product manager and worked at Pharmacia LKB Biotechnology, Inc., as a technical specialist.
Ms. Chadha holds master’s degrees in cell biology and anatomy from Columbia University and in microbiology from GB Pant University in India.
Donald D. Huffman
Chief Financial Officer and Member, Office of the President
Donald D. Huffman brings more than 30 years of corporate development and senior financial management experience to WaferGen. Most recently he was Chief Financial Officer at Asante Solutions, Inc., a late stage start-up medical device company, developing an improved drug delivery pump. Prior to Asante, Mr. Huffman served as Chief Financial Officer at Guava Technologies, a high-growth medical technology company with domestic and international operations where he assisted in the collaboration that facilitated its acquisition by Millipore Corporation.
As CFO of EndoSonics Corporation (now Volcano), a high growth $50 million manufacturer of medical devices, he assisted in completing a successful $43 million follow-on offering; the $65 million acquisition of another public device company to broaden the product line; and the $120 million IPO spinoff of a subsidiary while working to drive the company to profitability in this period. He served as CFO at Microcide Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company developing antimicrobials, and Celtrix Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology company addressing hormone deficiencies, where he worked with the Board and management teams to achieve successful merger outcomes valued at $440 million.
Mr. Huffman also served as CFO and Principal of Sanderling Ventures, a $900 million top-tier biomedical venture capital firm, where he was responsible for financial/administrative management of early-stage portfolio companies in addition to fund-raising, investor relations and participating in ad hoc teams to close financings and M&A deals, and assisting in raising a $420 million fund.
Mr. Huffman received his B.S. from Pennsylvania State University and his M.B.A. in Finance and Accounting from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He also completed the Financial Management Program at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
David Gelfand, Ph.D.
Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Gelfand joined WaferGen in 2007 as Chief Scientific Officer. Between October 2005 and August 2006, Dr. Gelfand worked as a consultant in the fields of molecular diagnostics, nucleic acid amplification, DNA sequencing and genotyping. From December 1991 to October 2005, Dr. Gelfand worked for Roche Molecular Systems, Inc., performing in vitro molecular diagnostics tests, discovery research and development for molecular research reagents.
While at Roche Molecular Systems, Inc., Dr. Gelfand was vice president of the discovery research division and a director of the program in core research where he was also recognized for his leading role in the emergence and evolution of DNA sequencing. He received his Ph.D. in Biology from University of California, San Diego. Dr. Gelfand is one of the pioneers of PCR having helped develop the technique while at Cetus Corporation in the 1980s.
Dr. Gelfand holds 50 patents and in 1990, was the recipient of the US Distinguished Inventor Award for Taq DNA Polymerase.
Syed Husain
Senior Vice President, Engineering
Syed joined WaferGen in October 2009 with more than 20 years of experience in leading engineering teams and developing successful products and product lines in the life sciences and semiconductor industries. As vice president of engineering he is responsible for the engineering and development of the SmartChip System, and for overseeing the transfer of manufacturing of the instrument and chip products.
Prior to joining WaferGen, Syed was vice president of engineering at Microfluidic System Inc. where he was responsible for the development and manufacturing of instruments for the Biowatch program for homeland security. Previously, he was at Caliper Life sciences for eight years, where he successfully led the development of the Caliper 250 HTS system that integrated microfluidics chip, optical detection and robotics; the LC 3000; and Lab Chip GX, Desk Top Profiler – products that are recognized as leading microfluidics systems for life science research. He also has experience developing single wafer products, which he achieved while at Alcatel Comptech. His engineering and development experience spans from micro fluidics instrumentation, PCR, sample preparation, chip and chip products.
Syed is a co-inventor/inventor on 9 U.S. patents, and has a BS in Chemical engineering from Texas A&M University, Texas.
David Ginzinger, Ph.D.
Vice President, Genomics Research and Applications
Dr. Ginzinger brings more than 15 years of experience in cancer research and R&D management to WaferGen. Prior to joining WaferGen, he was the Director of Operations of the Center of Molecular Oncology at the UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center, where he focused on establishing a CLIA laboratory to do molecular genotyping on clinical samples for therapy choices and patient care, as well as enrollment into clinical trials. Prior to UCSF he was at Linkage Biosciences where he is a founding SAB member and was the Vice President of R&D. At Linkage he helped develop the HLA screening test for use in solid organ transplants. He also spent almost three years at Applied Biosystems (ABI) (today part of Life Technologies) as Director of Scientific Operations, where he was responsible for leading a team of 25 scientists managing academic collaborations, new applications and fee-for-service functions, as well as counseling senior management regarding strategic new products and application development. Prior to ABI he was at UCSF for five years where he was laboratory director of the genome analysis core facility at the UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center where he provided services that included: real-time PCR including the development of about 1000 assays, DNA sequencing, linkage analysis, LOH studies and SNP analysis.
Dr. Ginzinger did his post-doctoral work with Ronald Jensen and Joe Gray and was one of the first users of real-time PCR. He obtained his Ph.D. from University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada in Medical Genetics. He is well published and has 62 peer-reviewed publications to date.