Management
Larry Tiffany
President & Chief Executive Officer
Prior to co-founding Diogenix, Mr. Tiffany was the SVP & General Manager of Genomics for Gene Logic where he managed a $22M business until he orchestrated its sale to Ocimum Biosolutions, Inc. Mr. Tiffany has had a wealth of business development and commercial experience in the molecular diagnostics and life science industries. He has held numerous executive positions leading operations, product development, business development, and marketing & sales. Prior to re-joining Gene Logic to restructure and strategically reorient the Genomics business in 2006, Mr. Tiffany was Chief Business Officer and President of Genetraks, an Australian-based veterinary molecular diagnostics firm. Prior to Genetraks, Mr. Tiffany was instrumental in building Gene Logic’s Genomics business from less than $10 million per year in revenue to well over $50 million per annum. He holds a JD from Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, New Hampshire; a MS in Biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland; and a BS in Chemistry from Nazareth College in Rochester, New York.
Eric Eastman, Ph.D.
Chief Science Officer
Dr. Eric Eastman is currently the Chief Science Officer of DioGenix, Inc. and a strategic business consultant to select biotechnology and biopharmaceutical companies. He was previously Vice President for Diagnostic Ventures at Gene Logic, Inc. He has 27 years of research and management experience in the biotechnology and biopharmaceutical industry. Dr. Eastman has held various senior management positions including Chief Scientific and Operations Officer for Genetraks Holdings, based in Brisbane, Australia; Senior Vice President, Chief Scientific Officer and SAB Chairman for MetriGenix Corporation (now Xceed Molecular) in Toronto, Canada; President of Morphochem, Inc. (the U.S. subsidiary of Morphochem AG, headquartered in Munich Germany); Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Gene Logic, Inc.; Director, Gene Expression and Process Research & Development at GeneMedicine, Inc. (now Valentis, Inc); Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of Lark Sequencing Technologies, Inc. (now Cogenics, a division of Clinical Data Inc.); and Director of Molecular Biology and Immunoassay Development at BIOTX, Inc. Dr. Eastman received his M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees in Human Genetics and Development from Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons and did his post-doctoral training in the Department of Cell Biology at Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Eastman also received a B.A. degree in Biology from Middlebury College and an M.S. degree in Genetics and Cell Biology from the University of Connecticut. Dr. Eastman has served on various Boards of Directors and currently serves on various scientific advisory boards for U.S.-based and International biotechnology companies.
Douglas W. Bigwood, Ph.D.
Senior Vice President, Informatics
Prior to cofounding Diogenix, Dr. Bigwood was the Senior Director of Biostatistics for Gene Logic. In this position he managed all data analysis activities for services clients and for internal projects including all diagnostic development projects. Before this, he spent more than nine years at Bayer Pharmaceuticals where he was a Director of Bioinformatics and helped establish Bayer’s bioinformatics infrastructure. In 2001, Dr. Bigwood joined Bayer’s Biomarker Oncology Advisory Team, a joint committee consisting of members of Research, Development, and Bayer Diagnostics. This team established the first formal biomarker program within Bayer. As technical lead for data analysis, Dr. Bigwood worked extensively to use genomics, proteomics, and metabonomics data to successfully develop models of efficacy for the drug Nexavar, which was approved in 2006. He also developed a novel method for selecting optimal gene sets for biomarker models and developed a custom distributed processing system to implement this method on a large Linux cluster. His work resulted in a number of publications and patent applications and he was awarded a Bayer Science and Technology award for this work in 2004. Before Bayer, he was a faculty member at the University of Maryland for over six years where he established, and was head of, the Genome Informatics Group. Major accomplishments at UMD include: developing the first genomics web site, establishing the first multi-species integrated genomics resource, developing the first dynamic hypertext linking on the web, and the first two-way data linking with NCBI’s Genbank database. Prior to this he held a number of contract and consulting positions with USDA, the National Cancer Institute, the University of Maryland, and Comsat Laboratories. A majority of this time was spent researching and developing artificial intelligence applications. Dr. Bigwood received his Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1983 with minors in Statistics and Genetics.
JoAnne Johnson, R.N.
Clinical Study Coordinator
JoAnne Johnson brings 30 years of clinical knowledge and experience from varying aspects of the medical profession. Following a nursing degree from Wesley College in Dover, Delaware she assumed head nursing assignments at New Jersey’s Somerset and Morristown Medical Centers with a focus in oncology, gastrointestinal diseases and autoimmune disorders. JoAnne’s nursing career subsequently evolved from direct patient care to public health teaching, medical office management, and research and development venues. Her most recent 8 years as Clinical Data Coordinator at Gene Logic, Inc. honed her skills as an expert in the field of analysis, review, coordination, and input of human clinical data documentation across a multi-national clinical network. Her knowledge and compliance with federal regulations and industry recognized standards for data base accuracy and integrity make her a critical member of the DioGenix team.
