RainDance Technologies Names Andy Watson Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer

Mr. Watson will also support business development activities and report directly to RainDance President and CEO, Roopom Banerjee.

“RainDance is at an exciting inflection point in its commercial evolution, and its products are well on their way to becoming enduring medical research solutions that will further advance the performance levels and economics necessary to realize the promise of genomics”

Mr. Watson has more than 20 years of experience in developing and commercializing innovative genomics technologies. He joins RainDance from Life Technologies where he was most recently Vice President, SOLiD Sequencing Product Management. In this role, Mr. Watson was responsible for business strategy, marketing and product management for all SOLiD sequencing, as well as single-molecule DNA sequencing systems and applications. Previously, he led Applied Biosystems’ (now part of Life Technologies) capillary electrophoresis (CE) sequencing business, including instruments, reagents, and software. Mr. Watson played a key role in several acquisitions, including the SOLiD and Ion Torrent sequencing technologies.
“We have achieved several important milestones in 2011 including significantly strengthening our executive team, closing a $37.5 million financing round, and successfully introducing a portfolio of comprehensive genetic screening research panels,” said Mr. Banerjee. “Andy is a highly respected industry veteran who brings deep domain knowledge in life science tools and a passion for customer-driven innovation. His track record of leadership in next-generation sequencing will enable us to accelerate our commercial expansion and time to market for these exciting new technologies.”

Before joining Applied Biosystems, Mr. Watson was a founder of Quantum Dot Corporation (acquired by Invitrogen) where he held executive technical and business management roles. He also led the development of technologies and software for large scale DNA analysis at Sequana Therapeutics (acquired by Celera) and at The Sanger Centre, where he founded and chaired the first genome technologies conference (now a part of AGBT). Mr. Watson has been the principal investigator on competitive federal grants worth over $10 million and is an inventor on more than 25 issued patents and applications. He is a regular speaker at leading industry and scientific meetings and is the author of 10 scientific publications on genomics, genetics, cell analysis and robotics. He holds M.Eng., M.A., and B.A. degrees from King’s College, Cambridge University, England.

"RainDance is at an exciting inflection point in its commercial evolution, and its products are well on their way to becoming enduring medical research solutions that will further advance the performance levels and economics necessary to realize the promise of genomics,” added Mr. Watson. “I am excited to join such a talented team and look forward to working closely with my new colleagues to drive global adoption of existing targeted sequencing applications and on the roll out of our digital PCR and single cell analysis solutions.”