Management Team
John Lillig‚ President & Chief Executive Officer
John Lillig has served as President and Chief Executive Officer for NEXUS Biosystems since its founding in October, 2005 and has over 30 years experience in the management of life science and clinical diagnostics operations. Prior to joining NEXUS Biosystems, John was the Chief Technology Officer for Discovery Partners International (DPI) and the Vice President of DPI's Discovery Systems Division, a provider of enabling technology platforms for pharmaceutical, biotech, agrichemical and academic research. Prior to DPI, he was Division Manager of the Analytical Systems Division of Bio-Rad Laboratories, a worldwide provider of analytical instrumentation and clinical diagnostics. Earlier in his career, he held several key management positions during his 18 years at Beckman Instrument's life science and clinical diagnostics operations. John received his B.S. in engineering from California Polytechnic University.
Rob Neeper, Vice President of Operations and Engineering
Rob Neeper has served as Vice President of Operations and Product Development for NEXUS Biosystems since its founding in October, 2005 and has over 30 years experience in the development of life science and clinical diagnostics products. He has been responsible for the design and development of a variety of successful scientific and automation products and holds a number of related patents. Prior to joining NEXUS Biosystems, he served as Director of Engineering for Discovery Partners International's Discovery Systems Division, a provider of enabling technology platforms for pharmaceutical, biotech, agrichemical and academic research. Before DPI, Rob was Director of Engineering for JIT Manufacturing, a contract manufacturer focused on clinical and scientific instrument production. He has also held several key management positions during his 15 years at Beckman Instrument's life science and clinical diagnostics operations. Rob received his B.S. in engineering from California Polytechnic University.
Charles R. Powell, Vice President of Commercial Operations
Mr. Powell has served as Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Field Service for NEXUS Biosystems since December, 2009. Prior to joining NEXUS, Charles was Vice President, Sales and Marketing for Aurora Biotechnologies . He has spent the majority of his professional career in a variety of life science sales and marketing roles and has over 12 years experience with Beckman Instruments. Between 1998 and 2004 Charles worked in a variety of capacities in the Investment Markets with PaineWebber and CIBC Oppenheimer. Charles graduated from the University of Colorado with a B.A. in Biochemistry with emphasis in Molecular Biology.
Rhett Affleck, PhD, Vice President of Technology
Rhett Affleck, PhD has served as Vice President of Technology and Software Development since NEXUS Biosystems’ founding in October 2005. At NEXUS Biosystems and his previous company, Discovery Partners International, he led efforts to create hardware and software products for automated compound storage equipment (Universal Store), automated storage and visualization system for protein crystallography (Crystal Farm), HTS (µARCS), and high throughput chemical synthesis platforms using the IRORI technology. Prior to this he worked at Pharmacopeia developing processes for producing their single-bead combinatorial chemistry libraries and their 1536-well HTS platform. Through innovation of novel technologies and integration linking existing tools, Rhett has guided multidisciplinary development groups of scientists, automation engineers, and software engineers to characterize and provide solutions for the rapidly changing needs of life sciences. Rhett has several publications and patents, and he currently gives workshops on compound and biological sample management strategies. Dr. Affleck graduated from UC Berkeley with degrees in Biophysics and Chemical Engineering. Rhett also did postdoctoral work at Los Alamos National Laboratory where he was a Human Genome Fellow, working on flow-cytometry based single-molecule detection platforms for ultra-high speed DNA sequencing, DNA sizing, and drug discovery.
Peter J. Coassin, Vice President Science
Peter Coassin has served as Vice President of Science for NEXUS Biosystems since December, 2009. Peter has over 27 years experience in the invention, development, and commercialization of various life science innovations and holds 38 issued patents in technology with numerous applications pending. During his career Peter has worked with many university professors to commercialize scientific innovation from the academic sector. His inventions include several instrumentation and chemical methods for automated peptide and DNA synthesis, the synthesis of DNA arrays for human diagnostics, instrumentation systems and consumables for high throughput and highly miniaturized cellular/biochemical drug screening and high performance cyclo olefin polymer based microplate technologies. He has held senior scientist and management positions at Milligen, Millipore, Beckman Coulter, Aurora Biosciences and Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Peter graduated from Tufts University with Bachelor of Science degrees in Chemistry and Biology.