About

Our Mission is to make lab testing accessible and immediate.

Genalyte brings laboratory testing to the patient and physician. 
Our goal is to provide onsite, real-time laboratory results for 89% of blood tests that primary care physicians typically order.
All results are reviewed through our cloud-based central lab before releasing them back to the physician for review and discussion with their patients.

Leadership

Our leadership team draws on diverse backgrounds spanning healthcare and technology.

ASHRAF HANNA, MD PHD.

ASHRAF HANNA, MD PHD.

CEO

Ashraf Hanna is the Chief Executive Officer at Genalyte. 

Ashraf joined Genalyte as Chief Executive Officer from Verily, an Alphabet company, where he was Chief Operating Officer.  Among other activities, he helped lead the company to obtain its first 510k approval and expand Covid testing sites during the pandemic.  Prior to Verily, Ashraf was the CEO at ORIC Pharmaceuticals, a company focused on developing drugs for resistant cancers.   Ashraf led the company from concept through preclinical and the beginning of Phase 1 clinical trials.  ORIC had an IPO at approximately $1B valuation while still in Phase 1.   Ashraf spent over a decade at Genentech as Vice President and head of Alliance Management, Portfolio Prioritization, and head of Commercial and Medical Affairs Finance.  He started his work career at McKinsey and Company. 

Ashraf has a PhD in Physics from Harvard, and an M.D. from the University of Massachusetts and studied Physics and Economics as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago.  

CASIMIR STARSIAK III

CASIMIR STARSIAK III

Sr. VP of Product and Operations

Casimir joined Genalyte from Verily, Google’s healthcare and life sciences spinout. There he wore many hats including building and leading the Strategy and Business Operations team and as General Manager for the Baseline clinical trials platform.

Prior to joining Verily, Casimir spent 5 years on Google’s Strategy team leading a variety of projects across the organization. Examples include helping to kickstart Google’s Cloud Genomics product as well as supporting the initial strategy and business planning for the nascent life sciences efforts in Google X, which eventually led to the creation of Verily. Prior to Alphabet, Casimir spent time in McKinsey & Company’s Business Technology practice as well as working at the Indianapolis VA Hospital as an Industrial Engineering Fellow.

Casimir received a B.S. from Purdue University in Industrial Engineering and a Masters in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University.

Rachel Larrenaga, J.D., Esq.

Rachel Larrenaga, J.D., Esq.

General Counsel

Rachel is responsible for overseeing all legal affairs at Genalyte including commercial transactions, business development transactions, intellectual property, corporate governance and compliance.  Rachel brings extensive legal experience over an 18-year career, in commercial negotiations, intellectual property licensing, acquisitions and venture-backed financing.  

Most recently, Rachel was Vice President of Legal at ChargePoint, one of the leaders in electric vehicle charging. She joined ChargePoint in 2014 as its second legal hire and helped grow the organization thru its recent transition to a public company in March 2021.  Rachel helped build  the entire North America commercial team and was responsible for negotiating high risk and high reward contracts.  Before going in-house, Rachel worked as a senior associate at Orrick Herrington and Sutcliffe and Murray & Murray. 

Rachel holds a BA from UC Davis (Summa Cum Laude) and a J.D. from UC Hastings (Magna Cum Laude, Order of the Coif).  Rachel is admitted to both the California and Texas State Bars.

SAM RUTTEN

SAM RUTTEN

Senior Director, Finance and Controller

Sam brings more than 12 years of experience in public accounting and corporate finance. In addition to all financial activities, Sam leads administration operations and plays a major leadership role in the Company’s business strategy. His focus is on establishing the structure and processes to scale growth-stage companies that are developing and commercializing disruptive technologies.

Sam brings extensive operational leadership experience raising venture capital and developing strategic financial plans. Most recently, Sam was Head of Finance and Controller at Roswell Biotechnologies, a molecular electronics chip company transforming DNA sequencing. He helped the company raise venture capital funding and was responsible for the IPO and commercialization readiness planning. Prior to that, Sam was at the cell therapy company, Fate Therapeutics. At Fate, Sam led the SEC reporting and SOX 404b implementation at the publicly traded company during rapid growth. Before going in-house, Sam worked as a senior business assurance associate at Moss Adams and Baker Tilly, working with many private and public life science clients.

He received his certified public accounting license after receiving a B.S. degree in corporate finance and accounting from the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse.

Board of Directors

ASHRAF HANNA

CEO

Ashraf Hanna is the Chief Executive Officer of Genalyte.

Ashraf joined Genalyte as Chief Executive Officer from Verily, an Alphabet company, where he was Chief Operating Officer. Among other activities, he helped lead the company to obtain its first 510k approval and expand Covid testing sites during the pandemic. Prior to Verily, Ashraf was the CEO at ORIC Pharmaceuticals, a company focused on developing drugs for resistant cancers. Ashraf led the company from concept through preclinical and the beginning of Phase 1 clinical trials. ORIC had an IPO at approximately $1B valuation while still in Phase 1. Ashraf spent over a decade at Genentech as Vice President and head of Alliance Management, Portfolio Prioritization, and head of Commercial and Medical Affairs Finance. He started his work career at McKinsey and Company. Ashraf has a PhD in Physics from Harvard, and an M.D. from the University of Massachusetts and studied Physics and Economics as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago.

CARY GUNN

Member, Board of Directors

Dr. Cary Gunn has been blazing trails in the technology community for almost 30 years.

Prior to founding Genalyte, Cary served as co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of Luxtera, a developer of innovative optical solutions; his military career includes almost 10 years in the United States Air Force, where he was responsible for launching GPS satellites. Holding 81 (and counting) issued U.S. patents, Cary has been recognized in publications including the MIT Technology Review, which named him a Top Young Innovator in 2003. Five years later, Cary’s achievements in silicon photonics were awarded with the Optical Society of America Adolph Lomb Medal and the Berthold-Leibinger Foundation Innovation Prize. He received his bachelor’s degree in Applied Physics and Organic Chemistry from the United States Air Force Academy and his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

SAEID AKHTARI

Member, Board of Directors

Saeid is the Managing Director at HBM Genomics investing in world-class entrepreneurs in life sciences companies.

He has more than 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur building successful biotech companies from scratch. Saeid is an active investor/advisor in leading life sciences companies, including Genalyte, Clear Labs, Convergent Genomics, Encoded Therapeutics, Haystack Biosciences, Seer Biosciences, Trace Genomics, and Xcell Biosciences.

Prior to HBM Genomics, Saeid was the founder, President & CEO of NextBio which was acquired by Illumina in 2013. Prior to founding NextBio, he was the President & CEO of Silicon Genetics which was acquired by Agilent in 2004. Mr. Akhtari has also held executive management positions at several other life sciences companies.

ANDREW CONRAD

Member, Board of Directors

Andrew Conrad, PhD, is the Chief Executive Officer, Chairman and Founder of Verily where he oversees an integrated team of engineers, scientists, designers, and medical experts working on a wide spectrum of healthcare-related projects.
Previously, he was Chief Scientific Officer of Laboratory Corporation of America (LabCorp). Dr. Conrad co-founded the National Genetics Institute, where he served as Chief Scientific Officer. He is a Working Group Member on the Precision Medicine Initiative and a member of the UCSF-Stanford Center of Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation (CERSI) Scientific Advisory Board.

JEFF HUBER

Member, Board of Directors

Jeff Huber is the Founding CEO and Vice Chairman of GRAIL (2016-present). GRAIL’s mission is to detect cancer early, when it can be cured.

Prior to GRAIL, Jeff was a Senior Vice President at Google. Over 13 years at Google, Jeff co-founded Google’s life sciences efforts in Google[x] (2013-2016), and led development and scaling for Google Maps (2011-2013), Google Apps (2005-2010), and Google Ads (2003-2011). During his tenure as an executive at Google, Jeff oversaw 50x growth in revenues (from $1 billion to >$50 billion) and organization (1,000 to >50,000 employees), and managed a $5 billion P&L and large distributed teams (5,000+ direct-line employees). Earlier, Jeff was vice president of architecture and systems development at eBay and senior vice president of engineering at Excite@Home, where he led consumer product and infrastructure development.

Jeff was recognized as one of the ‘100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs’ (2017), and is an active early-stage investor/advisor in breakthrough life sciences and technology, including Openwater, Mammoth Biosciences, Vir, Sana, Zymergen, Atomwise, Genalyte, Pinterest, Honor, OpenDoor, and AngelList.

Jeff holds a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from the University of Illinois, where he was Commencement Speaker (2016) and received a ‘Distinguished Alumni Award’ from the College of Electrical & Computer Engineering (2018) for ‘challenging the status quo through innovation’. He also holds a master’s degree in business from Harvard University. Jeff is a board member of GRAIL (Vice Chairman), Genalyte (Chairman), Electronic Arts (EA), Openwater, and The Exploratorium, and a former board member of Illumina (ILMN; 2014-2016).

JOE MARKEE

Member, Board of Directors

Joe Markee Managing Director at Express Ventures

Joe brings extensive experience in early stage company formation, capital raising, corporate management, and public and private corporate governance. Joe’s startup experience encompasses Primary Access as a founder and senior manager, Copper Mountain Networks as founding CEO, CTO and Chairman, Figure 8 Wireless as CEO and StackIQ as CEO and Chairman.

Joe was also a founder and served as President of the San Diego Telecommunications Council (renamed CommNexus). He has been honored with awards for his contributions to San Diego’s high-tech business community, including Master Entrepreneur.

RAJESH SWAMINATHAN

Member, Board of Directors

Rajesh is a Partner at Khosla Ventures. Rajesh brings with him two decades of experience assisting and investing in deeptech/ hardware startups across many industries including Cleantech and Healthcare.
Before joining Khosla Ventures, Rajesh served as the Head of Applied Ventures LLC, the Venture Capital arm of Applied Materials, where he managed a portfolio of over 85 hardware startups across 13 countries. Rajesh also drove the establishment of an $850M Materials Engineering Technology Accelerator (META) facility in NY, to enable access of semiconductor fabs for startups. Rajesh received Global Corporate Venturing’s (GCV) Powerlist award in 2019.

Before joining Applied Ventures, Rajesh worked at the venture arm of Third Point LLC. Previously, at Lucent’s Bell Labs, he drove the technical assessment & partnerships with several Photonics, MEMS and RF startups. Rajesh also led the design for reliability program for Lucent’s 10Gb/s and 40Gb/s telecommunication systems and supported the successful deployment of these systems globally.

While pursuing his MBA at Harvard Business School, Rajesh interned at Deutsche Bank’s cleantech investment banking group. Rajesh completed his M.S. at the University of Maryland at College Park, and received his Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from IIT Madras where he was awarded the Shankar Dayal Sharma (President of India) Medal for overall excellence.

ROBERT FAULKNER

Member, Board of Directors

Rob Faulkner is the Managing Director of RedMile Group, a healthcare investment organization that makes venture, growth, and crossover investing across healthcare.

Rob has been an equity analyst in the medical device industry since 1994. His coverage areas have included, among others, cardiology, orthopedics, urology, vision care, aesthetic surgery and diabetes. Rob has held positions with Thomas Wiesel Partners, Prudential Financial and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. Rob began his career on Wall Street at S.G. Warburg & Co. (now UBS) where he covered biotechnology and medical device stocks for three years. Prior to moving to sell-side research, he spent two years with The Wilkerson Group (now IBM), a consulting firm specializing in the assessment of the value of healthcare technologies.

Rob graduated from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and Harvard University.