Meet the Team

Prior to his work with Fluent, Brian spent the last 23 years building successful operating businesses, such as Agencourt Biosciences, Agencourt Personal Genomics, Courtagen Life Sciences and Medicinal Genomics.  Several of his companies were significant contributors to the NHGRI’s Human Genome Project, as well as key participants in the global effort to curate gene mutation associations for neurological disease conditions.  Brian has overseen and managed the implementation of highly efficient manufacturing and services operations, commercial sales organizations and sophisticated bioinformatics development initiatives.  Brian is an operating advisor to Arsenal Capital Partners and is a guest speaker at Columbia Business School.  He has served as the Chairman of the Board of the Analytical Life Sciences and Diagnostic Association, holds a BA in Computer Sciences, Business Management and Japanese, as well as an MBA in Finance from Columbia Business School.

During his more than 25 years of leading business and technology organizations, Sepehr has helped build and grow multiple companies from startup-to-exit (generating valuations over $100 million) as well as successfully guided large-enterprise organizations. These include Teradyne’s fiber optics business unit (serving as founder, technical, and marketing lead), Helicos BioSciences (chief system architect and head of engineering), and GnuBIO (EVP of product development and as VP & General Manager after acquisition by Bio-Rad). He is a driven, hands-on decision-maker with broad technical, operational, market, and business knowledge. He holds over 40 pending patents in semiconductor automation, fiber optics, optical systems, fluids handling, microfluidics, molecular biology, gene sequencing, and single-cell.

Sepehr received a BS from California Polytechnic, and MS and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT.

Leveraging her multidisciplinary background in molecular biology and microbiology, Kristina has been a dynamic leader in the development of novel commercial life-science and genomics products including an innovative DNA sequencing platform and multiplex PCR assays for a droplet microfluidics platform. Formerly, she was the principal scientist at Qiagen and, later, a senior scientist at Bio-Rad. She has deep expertise in assay development, biostatistics, bioinformatics, and all facets of the product development process, including agile-development principles.

Kristina obtained a BA from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from Harvard University; she completed postdoctoral work at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Robert brings to Fluent BioSciences over a decade of biomedical engineering and molecular biophysics experience in the development of advanced genomic-analysis technologies for applications in infectious disease, food safety, and cancer diagnostics. Specifically, he shepherds from ideation to implementation of novel technologies that integrate fluorescence detection, microfluidic systems, and sound molecular biochemistry. He served as a staff scientist at US Genomics and then as a senior scientist when that company became Pathogenetix.  At Bio-Rad, Robert managed the microfluidics team.

Robert earned a BS from Texas A&M University, Ph.D. from Baylor College of Medicine, and completed his postdoctoral work at University of Alabama, Birmingham.

Jessie Matakis is a high-performing marketing leader with a broad skill set across all marketing channels. As the Director of Marketing at Fluent BioSciences, Jessie combines execution and a strong business acumen to drive successful commercial launches and maximize brand impact. 

With a passion for translating complex technology into customer-centric messaging and simplified solutions, she has a track record of branding, launching, and growing cutting-edge instruments and life science products.  Arriving at Fluent after the successful launch of the first tankless nitric oxide delivery system, GENOSYL DS at VERO Biotech, Jessie demonstrates an aptitude for solving customer challenges, driving lead generation and revenue growth.

Tim is the founder and CEO of Unchained Labs. He is a serial entrepreneur who has been building great life-sciences companies for over 25 years. Tim has under his belt three successful exits: Molecular Devices, ProteinSimple, and Unchained Labs (which together generated over $1.3 billion of shareholder value). He founded Unchained Labs to solve problems for researchers in biologics and gene therapy; in just over six years, he built it into an $80 million-plus business. To date, Tim has raised nearly $200 million in venture capital, helped raise over $1 billion in the public equity markets, and has participated in four successful exits as an independent board member. He is an enthusiastic supporter of other entrepreneurial teams and currently serves as an independent director of LabVoice.

Tim received a BBA from the University of Wisconsin and an MBA from Stanford University.

Adam is a world-renowned researcher in the area of high-throughput biological assays. Companies founded on the basis of his groundbreaking microfluidics discoveries include GnuBIO, Mission Bio, Scribe, and Fluent BioSciences. Currently a physicist with the University of California, San Francisco, Adam holds an appointment there as an associate professor of bioengineering and therapeutic sciences. More than 20 patents bear his name, as do 100 published studies. Additionally, Adam serves as an investigator for the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub and California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences.

Adam received a AB degree from Harvard University and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania; he completed postdoctoral work at Harvard.

Bill is highly regarded for his expertise in research and clinical technology development. It is a reputation built on the development of commercially successful cytometric and genomic instrumentation and applications. Bill at present is the director of the Lab for Advanced Cytometry at the University of California, San Francisco, Department of Lab Medicine. He is also a venture partner at Genoa Ventures. Bill’s scientific work has appeared in over 100 peer-reviewed publications.

Bill received an MS degree from George Washington University and obtained a PhD from University Debrecen.

Wouter is a partner and member of the founding team at Illumina Ventures. He has more than 15 years of experience in the development and funding of life-science tools and genomics. Prior to joining Illumina Ventures, he served as the director of corporate development at Illumina Inc., where his main focus was venture investing and mergers-and-acquisitions. At Illumina, Wouter led investments that included Desktop Genetics (acquired in 2018 by Celixir) and Biota Technologies (currently an Illumina Ventures portfolio company).

Wouter graduated magna cum laude from the University of Ghent, Belgium, where he obtained BSc and MSc degrees in chemistry; he went on to earn a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Newcastle in the United Kingdom and an MBA from the University of Cambridge, also in the U.K.

Mike Dybbs is a partner at Samsara BioCapital, where he invests across all stages of the life-science sector—from seed stage to public equities. He currently serves on the boards of Samsara portfolio companies that include Enara Bio, IONpath, Levo Therapeutics, Nkarta Therapeutics, and Sutro (STRO). Prior to Samsara, Mike was a partner at New Leaf Venture Partners. Mike has served on the boards of Versartis (VSAR), Dimension Therapeutics (DMTX), Advanced Cell Diagnostics (acquired by Bio-Techne), and Principia. Before joining New Leaf, Mike was a principal at the Boston Consulting Group, serving as a core member of its healthcare practice.

Mike received a AB in biochemical sciences from Harvard University and a PhD in molecular biology from the University of California, Berkeley, which also awarded him a Howard Hughes Medical Institute fellowship.

Gary brings to Fluent BioSciences his vast business-development experience in DNA sequencing and other genomics technologies (such as microarrays, PCR, imaging, and more). He gained that experience working at Affymetrix, Life Technologies, and Agilent. Now, as an investor-entrepreneur, Gary helps startups evaluate markets, gauge partnering opportunities, and weigh investor interest in areas that include liquid biopsy assays and tools, sequencing, sample prep, genome editing, and therapeutics.

He received a BS and PhD from Stanford University School of Medicine’s Genetics Department.

Tony Godfrey is a professor of surgery and computational biomedicine at Boston University. A co-founder of Gothenburg, Sweden, based SimSen Diagnostics, his research interests include cancer biomarkers and molecular pathology (with a particular focus on technique development and clinical application of novel genomic technologies). Since 2001, he has received continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health for his role as an independent investigator. He is a standing member of the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Biomarkers Study Section and serves as a peer reviewer for many influential journals. Tony is a member of the scientific advisory boards of the DeGregorio Family Foundation as well as that of Fluent BioSciences (where he guides efforts to evaluate our technologies in oncologic clinical applications), and a past member of the Cepheid scientific advisory board.

He obtained a PhD from London’s Brunel University and completed postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Francisco.

Iain Clark is an assistant professor of bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and a faculty affiliate at the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences. His research combines tools from multiple disciplines—molecular biology, microfluidics, engineering, and bioinformatics, to study infectious diseases, central nervous system inflammation, and neural circuit connectivity. As a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, Iain pioneered molecular methods for brain connectomics. His postdoctoral work in the Abate Lab at the University of California, San Francisco, involved development of novel microfluidic tools for single-cell analysis. 

Iain received a BS from Cornell University and an MS from the University of California, Davis (both in biological engineering); later he earned a PhD in environmental engineering from U.C. Berkeley.