About Us

Adam is a co-founder of Mission Bio and heads cartridge and instrument development as Senior Director of Technology & Systems. He was first initiated into microfluidics when he joined Adam Abate’s UCSF lab after receiving a PhD in Applied Physics from Stanford. As a postdoc at UCSF, he took the fabrication and engineering skillset he learned from condensed matter physics and applied it to droplet manipulation, ultimately co-developing the technology that became the core of Mission Bio. He continues to be interested in tackling complex, interdisciplinary problems with physics.

Anjali is Vice President of Product Management at Mission Bio. She has launched cutting-edge products in DNA sequencing, RNA ISH, and multiplexed tissue imaging solutions. She has successfully developed and executed product roadmaps, business partnerships, and customer success programs in research and clinical markets. Previously, she held leadership positions at IONpath and Advanced Cell Diagnostics. She received a Master of Science in Chemical Engineering from McGill University and a Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Pune.

Anup is Vice President of Software and Informatics at Mission Bio. With over 10 years of experience, Anup has been following his passion for building solutions that intersect software, genomics, and engineering to improve our health. Previously, he was part of product management at 10x Genomics and Thermo Fisher Scientific, developing novel technologies for targeted sequencing applications. Anup received his PhD from Baylor College of Medicine in Structural and Computational Biology.

Charlie is co-founder and advisor of Mission Bio and is dedicated to solving complex biological problems with precision engineering, innovative biochemistry, and supported bioinformatics. Charlie has dedicated his career to commercializing next-generation hardware technology and scientific instrumentation at emerging ventures in healthcare and semiconductor industries. Prior to Mission Bio, he led R&D and Product at Novelx (acquired by Agilent) and then served in R&D and Marketing at Agilent. Charlie received a joint MBA from UC Berkeley and Columbia University, an MS in physics from UW Madison, and a BA in physics from Columbia University.

Darrin Crisitello is the Chief Commercial Officer of Mission Bio with over 19 years of experience in commercial leadership and business development. Previously, Crisitello led the global clinical teams at Color Genomics and Natera, where he was responsible for successfully building the teams to scale during their growth phases. He received his BS in Biology/Chemistry from Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA and his MBA from the University of Massachusetts.

Dave Ruff is VP of Research with over 30 years of experience in the biotech and academic research field. Previously, Dave was a visiting Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, Global Collaborations Research Leader at Fluidigm, and Director of Research at Ion Torrent, Life Technologies, and Applied Biosystems. Dave led teams involved in developing qPCR technologies, multiplex amplification for qPCR and next-generation sequencing, single-cell ATAC-seq, and single-cell microfluidic multimodal interrogation techniques.

George began his career as a research scientist at Pfizer and later moved to the tools side of the life sciences industry. Over the past 20 years, George has had leadership roles at companies in the genomics space and in stem cells and regenerative medicine. Prior to joining Mission Bio, George led the sales team at Cellular Dynamics, where he grew revenue from their startup phase through acquisition by FujiFilm, six years later. George completed his BS and MS in Microbiology from the University of Illinois.

Hannah Viernes leads the marketing team and has over 15 years of experience across life sciences tool companies in both product management and marketing. Most recently, Hannah led the Global Marketing team at Thermo Fisher Scientific for the Clinical Sequencing Division, where she launched the Ion S5 Instruments, along with Ion AmpliSeq Products and applications. Hannah completed her BS in Cell and Molecular Biology at the University of Washington.

Harsha Kavuri is the General Manager for our Pharma Assay Development (PAD) team. He leads the PAD team that enable our Pharma customers across areas such as biomarkers for solid tumors, hematological cancers and cell and gene therapy. Most recently, Harsha worked at Natera, where he led Sales Strategy and Business Systems. He was instrumental in scaling Natera’s Commercial team during its high growth years pre & post IPO. Prior to that, he was a Management Consultant at Bain & Company, working across a range of industries, clients, and geographies. He graduated from the International Institute of Information Technology in Hyderabad, India with a Masters in Software Engineering and Bioinformatics.

Marcel Roche is the Chief Financial Officer. He has extensive experience building finance and accounting organizations for fast-growing life science companies, including Illumina where he held various leadership roles over eight years in global financial planning and manufacturing accounting. Prior to Mission Bio, he was VP of Finance, both at Achaogen during the launch of the company’s first NDA-approved drug and Guardant Health, where he set up accounting processes and systems leading to an IPO. Marcel is a California CPA and holds an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.

Nigel P. Beard, PhD is the Chief Technology Officer with over 19 years of experience in strategic technology development and delivery of new product opportunities. Nigel brings R&D leadership in next-generation sequencing (NGS), microfluidics, AI, machine learning, and additive manufacturing. He has launched 50+ products, including full DNA sequencing platforms and machine-learning-based custom manufacturing systems, is an inventor on 40+ patents, and has extensive experience from GSK to Life Technologies to startups like Feetz. His experience creates the foundation to build the next innovations and scale in single-cell genomics. Dr. Beard holds a PhD in Microfluidics from Imperial College, London, an MSc in Analytical Chemistry from Loughborough University, and a BSc in Applied Chemistry from De Montfort University in Leicester, UK.

Yan is the Chief Executive Officer of Mission Bio. As a veteran of the genomics industry, Yan is passionate about empowering teams to deliver highly differentiated innovative solutions realizing the mission of accelerating their application to improve human health. Before Mission Bio, Yan served executive roles at Thermo Fisher Scientific, where she led commercial teams in China for rapid market success and general management roles for Reproductive Health and Microarray businesses. She also led product management and commercialization efforts for genetic analysis solutions at Affymetrix, NuGEN Technologies, and Molecular Devices. Yan holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Medical College of Wisconsin.