Eagle Genomics wings in new CEO

Eagle Genomics' co-founder and founding CEO, Abel Ureta-Vidal, has relinquished his role as chief executive so that his three-year old bioinformatics company can bring in greater experience at the top through David Flanders, the former head of StemCells' UK operation.

Flanders will seek to ensure Eagle takes advantage of the increasing demand for bioinformatics services arising from advances in sequencing technologies while Ureta-Vidal will step into the full time COO role and focus on delivery.

Eagle was founded in May 2008 by a team of former employees of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) in Hinxton at the renowned Wellcome Trust Genome Campus and works on an open source model.

Flanders past experience has brought him close to Hinxton, having worked as head of basic technologies at Lion Bioscience, the German bioinformatics company that was born out of EBI's umbrella organisation, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory. Lion also had a strong working relationship with EBI until it was sold and the Cambridge operation closed in 2005.

"After over three years as CEO, it is now the right time for a more experienced executive to bring the company to the next level," said Ureta-Vidal in a company statement. "I am pleased to welcome David and look forward to working with him as Eagle enters a period of rapid growth."

Flanders said he looked forward to working with the new team to expand into new areas and diversify the customer portfolio while Eagle chairman, Alan Barrell, said: "We are thrilled to have David join us at Eagle and we are confident that he will use his experience to build upon Eagle's solid reputation and extend our services into a range of exciting new areas."