The Genostar Team
Our sales, service, technical support, and R&D teams include biologists, bioinformaticians, and software developers
Management
Patrice Garnier, Ph.D. (CEO) has been with Genostar since its launch in 2004. A veteran entrepreneur, he created a web development company, which developed a portfolio of content management software. In 2000 the company was purchased by Ariane II, a Belgian company listed with EuroNext. From 2000-2002 he was director of the new technology development branch and member of the management team. Dr Garnier has a master's degree in quantum physics from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. He eaned a PhD in nanotechnology with Catherine Bréchignac at the Laboratoire Aimée Cotton in Orsay.
Adrienne Kennard (COO) has over ten years of experience as a researcher in the life sciences and as a consultant. She built her experience in the agrochemical and pharmaceutical industries (Chevron Chemical Company, Wesley-Jessen, Inc., Abbott Laboratories) as well as in the area of international mobility management for multinationals. Ms. Kennard joined Genostar in 2008 to lead business development and operations. Ms. Kennard has a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley and an MBA from the Grenoble Ecole de Management.
François Rechenmann, Ph.D. (Scientific Advisor and co-founder of Genostar) Dr. Rechenmann is a pioneer in the design of knowledge-based software and databases that facilitate understanding of biological mechanisms and targets. This understanding is key to bioprocess optimization and to the development of new bioprocesses for many industrial applications.
Since 2004, Dr. Rechenmann has been Genostar's scientific advisor. His mission is to provide scientists in life sciences market with an integrated bioinformatics solution that allows them to have all the necessary tools at their fingertips. He was responsible for developing Genostar's technology platform and the range of bioinformatics tools that comprise the heart of our technology offer.
A Senior Research Director with the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control and the Helix Group, Dr. Rechenman brings 30 years of experience in development of knowledge modeling and the modeling and simulation of gene interaction networks in bioinformatics to Genostar. In the 1990s, with the INRIA, his team built the technology used for one of the first object-oriented knowledge bases on E. coli, before the E. coli genome had been fully sequenced.
Dr. Rechenmann holds a PhD from the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble. He also holds a degree in computer science from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Ingénieurs en Informatique et Mathématiques Appliquées, Grenoble.
Scientific Advisory Board
Alain Viari received a Ph.D. degree in Biophysics from University Paris VI in 1989. After 10 years as at the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) where he was responsible for the Atelier de BioInformatique (Université Paris VI), he was recruited for Director of Research at INRIA Rhône-Alpes. His specialties are in bioinformatics and algorithmic developments for biological applications.
He is currently involved in the development of specialized knowledge bases and computer systems which integrate various analysis tools (in statistics, data analysis, pattern recognition) for exhaustive exploration and comparison of genomes at different levels of organization. This work, in collaboration with three other French labs, has led to the development of the Imagene software, devoted to handling data from complete genome sequencing, to help the user design strategy for analysis, and to present and handle analysis results synthetically and graphically.
He has begun this analysis on bacterial genomes, particularly on B. subtilis through a collaboration with the Institute Pasteur. Presently, this work focuses on the lexical and local aspects (identification of genes and regulatory signals, oligonucleotides over and under representation, coding bias, repeats etc.) and will be extended to a higher level of description (involving operons and regulons).
Dr Viari's work addresses the challenges of modelling and integrating heterogeneous biological data (sequences, regulatory switches, metabolic pathways) and heterogeneous methods (statistics, data analysis, stringology). From the biological point of view, the ultimate goal of his collaborative work is the understanding of the genomic "circuitry."
Antoine Danchin is currently the Director of the Genomes and Genetics Department at the Pasteur Institut, where he heads the Genetics of Bacterial Genomes Unit. He is an EMBO member and member of the International Advisory Committee of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database collaboration (INSDC: DDBJ / EMBL-EBI / GenGank).
Trained as a mathematician and a physicist, Dr. Danchin became an experimental microbiologist in the early seventies. He was an early proponent of the application of artificial intelligence techniques to the study of integrated problems in molecular genetics. As a result of his advocacy, the complete sequence of the Bacillus subtilis genome was published in 1997 after 10 years of work in a European joint effort.
He has promoted genome research in Hong Kong, where he created the HKU-Pasteur Research Centre in 2000. He organized a seminar with the Department of Mathematics of Hong Kong University to discuss epistemological and ethical problems raised by the recent developments in biology.
Dr. Danchin has published more than 500 articles and four books, including a book on the origin of life, and a book on genomes (The Delphic Boat, Harvard University Press, 2003).
Jacques Haiech is a professor at the Strasbourg School of Biotechnological Engineering and was director of the French Genomic Program from 1999 to 2003. He serves as biotechnology and bioinformatics advisor to several European agencies and pharmaceutical companies. He obtained his MS in mathematics in 1975 and his PhD in biochemistry in 1978. In 1987 and 1991, he was a visiting associate professor in the Pharmacology Department at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee (Howard Hughes Institute), and a visiting professor in the Molecular Pharmacology Department at Northwestern University in Chicago. He has authored more than 150 international scientific publications.
