# Sasan Amini

> Sasan Amini is the co-founder and CEO of Clear Labs, a San Carlos genomics company that turns next-generation DNA sequencing into a push-button diagnostic for food safety and infectious disease. An Iranian immigrant who left Tehran at 22, he earned a PhD in genomics at Princeton, worked in advanced research at Illumina, and in 2014 set out to make sequencing simple enough for any lab to run. When COVID-19 hit, Clear Labs pivoted its automated platform into SARS-CoV-2 surveillance and reached more than half of U.S. public health labs.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & CEO at Clear Labs
- **Organizations:** Clear Labs, Illumina, Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, Princeton University
- **From:** Tehran, Iran
- **Nationality:** Iranian-American
- **Education:** BSc, Biotechnology, University of Tehran, PhD, Biology / Genomics, Princeton University
- **Known for:** Co-founded and leads Clear Labs, which raised over $179M in total funding, Built a fully automated NGS platform combining DNA sequencing, robotics and cloud analytics, Led a rapid COVID-19 pivot that brought SARS-CoV-2 products to market in weeks

## Career timeline

- **2005** — Began PhD in genomics at Princeton University after immigrating from Iran at age 22
- **2010** — Completed PhD; work associated with the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics
- **2010s** — Worked in the advanced research department at Illumina
- **2014** — Co-founded Clear Labs with Mahni Ghorashi and Ramin Khaksar; became CEO
- **2015** — Clear Labs raises $6.5M Series A
- **2016** — Clear Labs raises $16M Series B
- **2018** — Clear Labs raises $21M Series C
- **2020** — Pivoted the platform to COVID-19; FDA Emergency Use Authorization granted
- **2021** — Launched whole genome sequencing for SARS-CoV-2 surveillance; raised $60M Series D; reached 50%+ of U.S. public health labs

## Achievements

- Co-founded and leads Clear Labs, which raised over $179M in total funding
- Built a fully automated NGS platform combining DNA sequencing, robotics and cloud analytics
- Led a rapid COVID-19 pivot that brought SARS-CoV-2 products to market in weeks
- Clear Labs reached more than 50% penetration of U.S. public health laboratories in 2021
- Secured FDA Emergency Use Authorization (2020) and AOAC International certification (2019)
- Holds multiple patents and publications in genomics

## Latest updates

- **2021-05** — Clear Labs closed a $60M Series D led by Morgan Stanley and T. Rowe Price.
- **2021-03** — Clear Labs reached more than 50% penetration in U.S. public health laboratories for SARS-CoV-2 sequencing.

## Links

- Website: https://www.clearlabs.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sasanamini/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVmK8XBbPpQ

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/sasan-amini
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-07-29