Agios Pharmaceuticals (Cambridge, MA, USA) has named Andrew Hirsch (right) CFO, succeeding senior vice president of finance Glenn Goddard. Hirsch has more than 20 years of experience in the biotechnology sector, most recently as president and CEO of BIND Therapeutics. He previously served as COO and CFO at BIND and held senior management positions at Avila Therapeutics and Biogen.

“I look forward to joining Agios at this exciting time and helping the team deliver on its vision for the future,” said Hirsch. “It's rare to see the research and development productivity that Agios has delivered in such a short period of time, and I am excited about the potential to advance those scientific breakthroughs to benefit patients.”

Elizabeth Crowley (right) has been promoted to the newly created position of senior vice president, chief product development officer, at Celldex Therapeutics (Hampton, NJ, USA). She was previously senior vice president of product development. She joined the company in 2009 as vice president, clinical development, after serving as vice president of development operations at CuraGen.

George Q. Daley has been named dean of Harvard Medical School (Boston) effective 1 January 2017. He succeeds Jeffrey Flier, who stepped down on 31 July, and interim dean Barbara McNeil. Daley has spent his entire career in Cambridge and Boston, earning a medical degree from Harvard and a PhD in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is currently a professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard Medical School and director of the stem cell transplantation program at Boston Children's Hospital and the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute.

Proteostasis Therapeutics (Cambridge, MA, USA) has announced the appointments of James M. DeTore as CFO, Geoffrey S. Gilmartin as chief development officer, Marija Zecevic as vice president of business development and Eric B. Rabinowitz as a member of the company's board of directors. DeTore joins the company from bluebird bio, where he served as CFO from 2014 through 2016. Gilmartin most recently served as senior medical lead for global medicines development at AstraZeneca. Previously, he was medical lead for the Kalydeco (ivacaftor) clinical development program at Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Zecevic was the founder and managing director at pharma consulting firm Zebra Ventures. Prior to that, she held several business development positions at Bioxell, a Roche spin-off. Finally, new board member Rabinowitz is vice president of global corporate development at Perrigo Company. Previously, he held several positions of increasing responsibility over an 11-year career in investment banking.

Synthetic biology company Verdezyne (Carlsbad, CA, USA) has named David Kelsey as CFO. Kelsey was CFO of Elevance Renewable Sciences from 2011 to 2015. Prior to that he was senior vice president and CFO of Fortune 500 company Sealed Air Corp.

Clinical stage complement immunotherapy company Apellis Pharmaceuticals (Louisville, KY, USA) has added Robert Kim as chief medical officer. He has over 30 years of clinical experience in ophthalmology as well as industry experience at Genentech; GlaxoSmithKline, where, as vice president of clinical ophthalmology, he helped build an early stage clinical pipeline; Novartis/Alcon; and most recently at retina startup Vision Medicines, where he was chief medical officer and head of R&D. He is currently associate clinical professor of ophthalmology at the University of California, San Francisco.

Calico (S. San Francisco, CA, USA), Alphabet's life science spin-off, has named Daphne Koller as chief computing officer. Koller co-founded online educational company Coursera in 2012, serving as co-CEO and later president.

Sygnis (Madrid and Heidelberg, Germany) has announced the appointment of Heikki Lanckriet as co-CEO, chief scientific officer and a member of the management board. He was most recently CEO of Expedeon Holdings, which he co-founded in 2003. He will share co-CEO duties with Pilar de la Huerta, who also serves as Sygnis' CFO.

Keith Regnante has been appointed CFO at Wave Life Sciences (Cambridge, MA, USA). He was most recently a vice president of finance at Shire, where he served on the R&D, pipeline and finance leadership teams. Before joining Shire, Regnante held a number of positions of increasing responsibility at Biogen, including leading the finance teams for corporate finance, R&D and business development.

Philip W. Schiller has joined the board of directors of Illumina (San Diego). He is a 25-year veteran at Apple, currently serving as senior vice president of worldwide marketing and as a member of Apple's executive team responsible for product marketing, developer relations, business marketing, education marketing, international marketing and App Store programs.

Akshay Vaishnaw (right) has been appointed to the board of directors of Editas Medicine (Cambridge, MA, USA). Vaishnaw currently serves as executive vice president of R&D and chief medical officer at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, which he joined in 2006. He serves on the board of directors of Visterra and the scientific advisory board of Scholar Rock.

Cancer genomics company Inivata (Cambridge, UK) has appointed Peter Wrighton-Smith to its board of directors. Wrighton-Smith is the founder and CEO of diagnostics company Oxford Immunotec.