Affymetrix says founder will ‘begin to transfer’ his CEO duties
Affymetrix founder and chief executive Stephen P.A. Fodor (pictured) “will begin to transfer his CEO responsibilities to Kevin M. King, president of Affymetrix,” the company announced Wednesday afternoon. Fodor will assume a new role as full-time executive chairman of the company’s board. King will take over the top job on New Year’s Day.
The announcement comes on the heels of preliminary results released last week for its most recent quarter that estimated sales of about $75 million, down from the $91.5 million most analysts were expecting, an 18 percent miss. The company cited “increased competition for academic research funding and continued softness in industrial spending.”
Fodor founded Affymetrix to commercialize formulas he and his colleagues developed in the late 1980s that provide a platform for acquiring, analyzing and managing complex genetic information in order to improve the diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of disease.
Fodor, a native of Seattle, received his B.S. in Biology and M.S. in Biochemistry from Washington State University and his Ph.D. in Chemistry at Princeton University. From 1986 to 1989, he was a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow at The University of California, Berkeley, working on time-resolved spectroscopy of bacterial and plant pigments.
In 2001, Fodor founded Perlegen, a Mountain View biotech company providing diagnostic tools to identify genetic differences and help understand human genetic variability.
Which brings to mind a quote from Mark Twain that Fodor used to end a talk he gave in 2004 at the In 2001, Fodor founded Perlegen, a Mountain View biotech company providing diagnostic tools to identify genetic differences and help understand human genetic variability.
Which brings to mind a quote from Mark Twain that Fodor used to end a commencement talk he gave in 2004 before the College of Chemistry at Cal:
“You are what your parents make you, but it’s your own fault if you stay that way.”
