Members of the Leadership Team
Paul A. Rhodes, Ph.D. - CEO and Founder
Dr. Rhodes founded Next Gen Diagnostics (NGD, www.nextgen-dx.com) at the Sanger Institute in Cambridge UK, along with pathogen bioinformatics pioneers Julian Parkhill and Sharon Peacock, to lead the transformation of microbiology diagnostics enabled by low cost whole genome sequencing (WGS). By combining a microfluidic liquid handling system to automate WGS sample preparation with fully automated pathogen bioinformatics, NGD is able to provide bacterial WGS, with its enormous depth of information, at lower costs than PCR panels. NGD maintains an office in the Broers Building on the West Campus of the University of Cambridge.
Previously Dr. Rhodes founded and was CEO of Specific Diagnostics where he directly oversaw research and development of microbiology diagnostic systems, resulting in the Reveal rapid antibiotic susceptibility testing instrument, which was designated a Breakthrough Device by the FDA.
NGD has developed novel ML systems for the prediction of antibiotic resistance from WGS with accuracy exceeding standard-of-care tests (Humphries et al, J Clinical Microbiology 2023), and has shown that these models are “explainable”, in that they can be dissected to reveal mechanisms of resistance (Rhodes et al ASM Microbe Abstract 2023). These methods can be extended to the sequence-based prediction of any measurable phenotype, including protein expression level, a novel tool for predictive bacterial proteomics, with the resulting models dissected to reveal underlying genomic mechanisms controlling expression. As bacterial genomic machinery is foundational, the insights from this program may shed light on fundamental mechanisms of DNA-based life.
Dr. Rhodes received a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from NYU Medical School, a M.S. in Physics from Stanford, and a A.B. Magna cum laude in Physics from Harvard, and was a Visiting Scholar at Stanford from 2005-2007.
EUGENE BRAGIN - CTO AND COFOUNDER
Mr. Bragin has spent over 10 years in leadership of bioinformatics teams on the Sanger Institute Campus in Hinxton, UK, leading an ENSEMBL team developing a leading genome browser, a DECIPHER team developing the world's foremost annotated database of inherited disease-causing variants, and then co-founding the Sanger-based company Congenica, which has successfully commercialized DECIPHER, as its founding head of product development. He has thus combined world-class bioinformatic application development, developing open source tools used world-wide, with customer-facing bioinformatic product development. He leads an expert team at Next Gen responsible for both pipeline development and the Next Gen Dashboard, a unique interactive information service that puts the analyzed results of all pathogen WGS run at the fingertips of our users each morning. Mr. Bragin received a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, and a M.S. in Bioinformatics from the University of Cranfield, UK.