whole-genome-sequencing
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Mansour Samadpour and the Arithmetic of an Invisible Threat
A Seattle microbiologist built a career around a stubborn proposition: food should be treated as risky before a crisis proves it was. His instruments are DNA, probability and the willingness to look for trouble.
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.
Kian Sadeghi
Kian Sadeghi is the founder and CEO of Nucleus Genomics, a New York biotech building consumer whole-genome sequencing that aims to put your DNA in your pocket. He dropped out of the University of Pennsylvania at 20, taught himself genetics across 18 notebooks in a Brooklyn year he hid from his parents, won a Thiel Fellowship, and raised roughly $32 million from Peter Thiel, Alexis Ohanian's Seven Seven Six, Balaji Srinivasan and Founders Fund. His mission traces to a cousin who died young of a suspected heart-rhythm disorder, and his blunt embrace of 'genetic optimization' has made him one of the most debated young founders in biotech.
Yongwei Zhang
Yongwei Zhang is the CEO of Complete Genomics and MGI Americas, leading one of the most ambitious efforts to make whole-genome sequencing fast, accurate, and affordable at scale. With a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Johns Hopkins and dual bachelor's degrees from Tsinghua University, Zhang brings a rare blend of optics precision, software fluency, and entrepreneurial grit to the genomics frontier. He architected the DNBSEQ sequencing platform series now used by over 2,600 researchers in 100 countries, and has positioned Complete Genomics as a formidable challenger to Illumina's market dominance - at a fraction of the cost.
Noor Siddiqui
Noor Siddiqui is the founder and CEO of Orchid Health, a San Francisco-based biotech startup offering whole-genome sequencing for IVF embryos, screening for 1,200+ genetic variants. Motivated by watching her mother lose her sight to retinitis pigmentosa, she dropped out of high school at 17 to become one of the youngest Thiel Fellows, later returned to earn dual CS degrees at Stanford, and then built Orchid with $16.5M in funding from investors including 23andMe founder Anne Wojcicki and Coinbase's Brian Armstrong. She is also the host of the podcast 'Conceivable with Noor.'