Meet the Team


Will Alaynick co-founded NanoCellect in 2009. Will has over 15 years of startup experience starting with ScholarNexus, an incubator where he supported SweetSpot (acquired DXCM), and NeuroEnabling (IPO ONWD), and co-founded NanoCellect and Arima Genomics. He also co-founded and is a Director for Defined Bioscience. He has carried out research, operational and commercial roles at these companies helping them to raise over $25M in NIH Awards, as well as venture and strategic investments to support manufacture and global sales. His scientific training, including a PhD in Biomedical Sciences and postdoctoral training in Neuroscience, was in 4 HHMI labs at the University of Washington, UCSD and The Salk Institute resulting in 29 papers and 2 patents.


Jeremy joined NanoCellect in August 2019. He currently serves as the company’s Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Operations. Jeremy has been instrumental in raising over $35M in equity and venture debt, as well as executing on the long-term strategic goals for the company. Prior to joining NanoCellect, Jeremy was the Director of Finance at BioLegend Inc. He brings over 25 years of global finance, accounting, and operational experience, working in senior roles in both small private companies and large public companies and spanning the biotechnology, software, and wireless industries.
Jeremy received a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from the University of Richmond and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from UCLA. He also obtained a Certified Public Accountant license (currently inactive) from the State of California.


Mike brings over 10 years of experience developing innovative technologies and impactful products. He developed cell isolation technology and co-founded Sonrgy to commercialize an ultrasound-targeted nanomedicine for cancer treatment.
Mike holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Boston University and a PhD from UC San Diego, where he carried out his thesis research at the Moores Cancer Center with a focus on photonics, ultrasound, and cancer nanomedicine.


Sunghwan brings over 20 years of expertise in the integration of microfluidics, optics, electronics, and micro/nano-fabrication for developing life science instruments and consumables. He invented the core technologies of the company when he carried out his thesis research project on the development of lab on a chip flow cytometer and cell sorter for various biomedical applications. As CTO of NanoCellect, he has led its R&D projects and product development, and intellectual property portfolio management. He also conducted many NIH SBIR projects as a PI at NanoCellect. He was selected for a Marylou Ingram Scholar of the International Society for Advancement of Cytometry (ISAC) in 2012 and recognized for his contribution to the field of cytometry. He received his Ph.D. from UCSD and a BS degree in Materials Science Engineering from Seoul National University.


Olivier brings over 20 years of experience in product development, product management and marketing in the biotech industry. As a research scientist, he worked in assay development using the GFP and developed several fluorescent protein variants for Clontech (now part of Takara). He acquired experience in bio-imaging at BD Biosciences and subsequently was part of the development and product management team for the Celigo image cytometer (now part of Nexcelom/PerkinElmer). Olivier leads the product management and marketing team at NanoCellect Biomedical. He received his PhD. in biochemistry from the University of Paris-Saclay and his MBA from the University California, San Diego.


Paul brings over 20 years of industry experience to the NanoCellect team. He spent 10 years as a bench scientist supporting drug discovery in various disease endpoints such as Alzheimer’s Disease and inflammatory disorders. Following that, Paul was a key team member in the development and commercial release of the Celigo Imaging Cytometer (now sold by Nexcelom Bioscience). From there, he has held various sales and marketing roles in R&D instrumentation suppliers. Most recently served as the Head of Sales for the Americas at Chemspeed Technologies. Dr. DiGregorio received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of California, San Francisco and B.S. in Biology from the University of California, San Diego.


Dr. Morachis has over 15 years of experience developing life science tools and co-founding several life science startups. Jose co-founded and led NanoCellect from concept to a global leader in cell sorting technology while developing many new applications, patents, and products. Jose recently co-founded and is board chairman of Defined Bioscience, a company developing culture media for stem cell research. In 2021 he joined the Board of Directors of Lynx Bio to support their growth as a drug discovery company leveraging their microfluidic technology to create novel cell-based cancer therapeutics. As managing partner of ScholarNexus, he co-founded Arima Genomics, the leader in 3D genomics. Dr. Morachis performed postdoctoral research at UCSD’s Laboratory of Bioresponsive Materials in an effort to fuse engineering and biology. He published several research papers in the field of nanotechnology and immunology and helped develop vaccine and drug targeting tools for inflammatory diseases and cancer. He received his PhD from UCSD while performing cancer biology research at the Salk Institute and a BS degree in biochemistry from UC Riverside.


Chris Neary joined NanoCellect as CEO in 2018. With over 30 years of experience leading commercialization of life sciences solutions to advance automated drug discovery with Sagian, a company acquired by Beckman Coulter in 1996. Chris advanced to senior management roles at Beckman Coulter; initially leading the growth of Beckman’s automation solutions, genomic sequencing, and tools businesses and then promoted to leading Corporate Strategy for Beckman in 2009. After the acquisition by Danaher in 2011, Chris transitioned to Beckman Coulter Life Sciences assuming leadership of product management and strategy that included Beckman’s cellular analysis business. Chris was approached by the Private Equity firm, Water Street, to assume the leadership of AROTEC Diagnostics, a New Zealand antigen diagnostics company, growing this business by 300% in three years that resulted in the acquisition of this business to Sebia Diagnostics. Given his proven track record of executing growth of life sciences portfolios, and M&A leadership at both Beckman and Danaher, he joined NanoCellect to further advance our growth strategy. With the founders of NanoCellect, Chris drove our execution to enable NanoCellect to lead our differentiated leadership in microfluidic cell sorting solutions that has enabled our customers’ ability to advance their research efforts in cellular discoveries.


NanoCellect Official Mascot
Wolfie graduated to Official NanoCellect Mascot shortly after the WOLF cell sorter was born. Since then, he has travelled the world, visited many customer labs, brought good spirit to scientists and success to their science. Wolfie favorite thing to say: “Gentle Sorting, Healthy Cells, Better Science”.


Currently he is President of Tyball Associates, LLC, a commercialization strategy consulting company in the biotech tools space. He serves on the board of directors of Carterra Inc, Cytek Biosciences, NanoCellect Inc and KromaTiD. He was on the board at Swift Bioscience for 11 years until it sold to Integrated DNA Technology in March 2021. Most recently he was CEO, Solulink Inc. Prior to that he was CCO at Accuri Cytometers, which was sold to Becton Dickinson in March 2011 for $205M. Prior to Accuri Cytometers, he was CEO of Amnis Corporation, a venture backed technology start-up developing and selling high-end imaging flow cytometers. He has also served as Chief Commercial Officer for Molecular Probes, Inc., the world leader in reagents for cell analysis, including flow cytometry consumables Prior to that he was with Orchid Biosciences as Sr. VP and General Manager. Before Orchid he was with Amersham Pharmacia Biotech Inc., where he rose to President for North America in over 25+ years with the company.


Mr. Nicolas Barthelemy has over 30 years of experience in the Biopharma, Life Sciences and Diagnostics sectors as an operating executive, Board Member and VC/PE advisor. His 25 year operating experience involved scaling organizations and leading change across a broad range of functions (manufacturing, operations, commercial, general management), geographies and company sizes ($10M to $4B in revenue, both private and public).  Among his most recent operating roles were CEO at BioTheranostics and CCO at Life Technologies, where he was an executive for over 9 years. Prior to that, Mr. Barthelemy worked with Biogen and Merck. He currently serves on the board of directors of Repligen, Twist and Slingshot, and is Chairman of the Boards of NanoCellect and Biocare. He previously served on the Boards of 908 Devices, Fluidigm, Genewiz, Avantor and Essen. Mr. Barthelemy received an M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and an engineering degree from Ecole Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles (Paris, France).


Charles Lin joined Illumina Ventures in 2022, and he brings 15 years of a wide range of experience in the life-science and genomics sector.
Most recently, Charles was Vice President of Business Development and Marketing at Element Biosciences, a venture-backed startup developing new sequencing technology and solutions. He helped Element raise $80M in Series B financing and lay down significant groundwork for its critical supplier relationships, go-to-market and partnering strategy.
From 2007 to 2019, Charles served in several R&D and business roles at Illumina, Inc. He led cross-functional teams to develop microarray and sequencing applications for research or clinical purposes including genetic testing, oncology, transplant medicine, pharmacogenomics, microbiology, single-cell analysis, etc. In 2017, Charles transitioned to Corporate Development to focus on M&A, emerging business areas, and corporate investment opportunities. He led the $100M acquisition of Edico Genome and played a key role in the proposed acquisition of Pacific Biosciences (later blocked by the FTC).
Charles graduated from National Taiwan University with a B.Sc. in Chemistry. In graduate school, Charles studied gene regulation in the antiviral innate immune response with Tom Maniatis and received his Ph.D. in Chemistry and Chemical Biology from Harvard University. During his postdoctoral training with Scott Emr at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and UC San Diego School of Medicine, Charles discovered a new family of arrestin-related ubiquitin-ligase adapters that regulate endocytosis and protein turnover at the cell surface.
Charles is based in San Diego, California.


Dr. Morachis has over 15 years of experience developing life science tools and co-founding several life science startups. Jose co-founded and led NanoCellect from concept to a global leader in cell sorting technology while developing many new applications, patents, and products. Jose recently co-founded and is board chairman of Defined Bioscience, a company developing culture media for stem cell research. In 2021 he joined the Board of Directors of Lynx Bio to support their growth as a drug discovery company leveraging their microfluidic technology to create novel cell-based cancer therapeutics. As managing partner of ScholarNexus, he co-founded Arima Genomics, the leader in 3D genomics. Dr. Morachis performed postdoctoral research at UCSD’s Laboratory of Bioresponsive Materials in an effort to fuse engineering and biology. He published several research papers in the field of nanotechnology and immunology and helped develop vaccine and drug targeting tools for inflammatory diseases and cancer. He received his PhD from UCSD while performing cancer biology research at the Salk Institute and a BS degree in biochemistry from UC Riverside.


Chris Neary joined NanoCellect as CEO in 2018. With over 30 years of experience leading commercialization of life sciences solutions to advance automated drug discovery with Sagian, a company acquired by Beckman Coulter in 1996. Chris advanced to senior management roles at Beckman Coulter; initially leading the growth of Beckman’s automation solutions, genomic sequencing, and tools businesses and then promoted to leading Corporate Strategy for Beckman in 2009. After the acquisition by Danaher in 2011, Chris transitioned to Beckman Coulter Life Sciences assuming leadership of product management and strategy that included Beckman’s cellular analysis business. Chris was approached by the Private Equity firm, Water Street, to assume the leadership of AROTEC Diagnostics, a New Zealand antigen diagnostics company, growing this business by 300% in three years that resulted in the acquisition of this business to Sebia Diagnostics. Given his proven track record of executing growth of life sciences portfolios, and M&A leadership at both Beckman and Danaher, he joined NanoCellect to further advance our growth strategy. With the founders of NanoCellect, Chris drove our execution to enable NanoCellect to lead our differentiated leadership in microfluidic cell sorting solutions that has enabled our customers’ ability to advance their research efforts in cellular discoveries.


Dr. Todd Peterson is the Founder and Principal of GenApex Bio, a life sciences advisory, investment, and board practice company based in Coronado, California. With over 35 years across academic research and industrial R&D, spanning molecular genetics, genomics, cell biology and synthetic biology engineering, his experience encompasses biotechnology, clinical diagnostics, life science research tools, drug discovery and industrial biotechnology markets, products, and technologies. Prior to GenApex Bio, Dr. Peterson was Chief Scientific Officer at the Allen Institute comprising foundational and applied research programs across its Brain Science, Cell Science, Immunology Institutes, and the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group. Prior to the Allen Institute, Dr. Peterson was Chief Technology Officer at Synthetic Genomics (SGI) where he led an integrated team of scientists, engineers and informaticians to engineer diverse complex living systems.  Before joining SGI, he led Synthetic Biology, Cloning and Protein Expression and Genomics R&D at Invitrogen/Life Technologies (now ThermoFisher), a global leader in life science research tools.  Dr. Peterson has held industrial R&D leadership and bench scientist positions with increasing responsibilities at Genicon Sciences, Trega Biosciences, Hybritech, Gen-Probe and Immulok, focusing on technology development and product commercialization. Dr. Peterson was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute in Cologne, Germany, received his Ph.D. in Microbiology at the University of Southern California School of Medicine, and received his M.A. in Biological Sciences and his B.A. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Among his other engagements with life science companies, investors and research institutions, Dr. Peterson serves as Director on the Boards of the Center of Excellence for Engineering Biology (CEEB/GP-Write), Armata Pharmaceuticals (ARMP), Molecular Assemblies and NanoCellect BioMedical, and the Scientific Advisory Boards for Iridia, Karma Biotechnologies, Resolute Bio and Nanostring (NSTG).


Scott Estes has been with Codiak BioSciences since they began operations in 2016. He has held several roles there focused on the development of the first scalable manufacturing process for engineered extracellular vesicles and the subsequent tech transfer to produce GMP material to support Codiak’s clinical programs. Prior to joining Codiak, Scott had roles at both Biogen and Genzyme leading cell line development and analytical support for early process development. Scott holds a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Roswell Park Cancer Institute and was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.


Yuhwa Lo is a co-founder of NanoCellect. He also holds the position of William SC Chang Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at UCSD. He is also affiliated with UCSD Materials Science and Engineering and Bioengineering Department. Lo directs the UCSD San Diego Nanotechnology Infrastructure (SDNI), a national nanotechnology facility supported by the National Science Foundation. His research interests cover the fields of biomedical devices and systems, Lab-on-chip, bioimaging, advanced semiconductor and photonics devices, and condensed matter physics and applications. He has been awarded 50 patents and published over 500 scientific papers and been broadly involved in biotech and high-tech industries as consultants and scientific advisors. He received his PhD in electrical and computer engineering from UC Berkeley.


Patricia Rogers has worked in the field of flow cytometry for the past sixteen years and has managed several flow cytometry cores, including Harvard Medical School/Harvard University. She joined the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in 2015 to lead the newly founded flow cytometry core facility. The facility opened in 2016 and has evolved beyond flow to encompass single cell genomics, histology, and imaging. Her philosophy for easy to use shared instrumentation has driven the approach of the Broad Flow Core to be one of the leading shared resource labs in Boston. She has a Bachelor of Science from UMass Boston.


Dr. Stone is an award-winning immunologist with expertise in T cell immunology, immuno-oncology, and human immunology. At GigaGen as Vice President of Oncology she leads immuno-oncology research and discovery of antibody therapies with best-in-class potential. Previously Dr. Stone was Assistant Professor at The Wistar Institute Cancer Center where her independent laboratory focused on understanding the multiple mechanisms of action of first-generation immune checkpoint inhibitorswith the goal of identifying strategies to overcome resistance. She was awarded several grants for her research including the Melanoma Research Alliance’s Bristol-Myers Squibb-MRA Young Investigator Award and funding from the NIH. She also held the position Wistar Institute Assistant Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Perlman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania where she was a member of the Institute for Immunology, the Immunology Graduate Group Executive Committee, and the Gene Therapy and Vaccines Program. Dr. Stone is an active member of the American Association of Immunologists (AAI), where she serves as Chair of the AAI-Clinical Immunology Committee. Previously Dr. Stone served as an AAI’s Tumor
Immunology Abstract Programming Co-Chair, was an AAI Public Policy Fellow, and was the 2017 recipient of AAI’s Chambers-Thermo Fisher Scientific Memorial Award. Dr. Stone has published numerous manuscripts in journals including Immunity, Nature Reviews Immunology, Science, Cancer Immunology Research, ELife, and PNAS, mentored students and postdoctoral fellows, and served as a reviewer for study sections and journals. Dr. Stone holds a B.S. in Biology summa cum laude from the University of New Hampshire and a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from UC-San Diego where she also completed a postdoctoral fellowship.

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