Michael L. Metzker, Ph.D. - Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Metzker is an Assistant Professor of Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine, an adjunct Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Rice University, and Founder, President and CEO of LaserGen, Inc. He received his B.S. from the University of California at Davis in 1984 and his Ph.D. from the Baylor College of Medicine in 1996. He has been employed as a senior scientist at both Bio-Rad Laboratories and Applied Biosystems developing separations and robotic technologies for DNA analyses. Following completion of his Ph.D., he developed genomic technologies for identification of novel drug targets at Merck & Co., Inc. Since returning to Baylor College of Medicine in 1999, his research has focused on development of novel DNA sequencing technologies for high-throughput sequence analysis of single nucleotide polymorphisms in large population sets, specifically, in novel instrumentation and chemistry programs. He is expanding this focus with a plan to build a full-scale sequencing system at LaserGen, Inc. Dr. Metzker has served as an expert witness of phylogenetic analysis of HIV DNA sequences in several criminal cases, one of which represented the first introduction of these methodologies in the US court system.