Company Management Team

NextBio's management team consists of experienced life science and technology industry executives from companies such as Agilent, Chiron, Documentum, HP, Illumina, Incyte, Invitrogen, Johnson & Johnson, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Perkin-Elmer, and Silicon Genetics. With experience in building world-class companies, our team is dedicated to developing and delivering high value life science business solutions with a firm commitment to customer satisfaction and rapid return on investment.

Saeid Akhtari

Co-founder, President and CEO
Mr. Akhtari leads NextBio with more than 20 years of experience developing and commercializing software products for the analysis and management of life sciences data. As CEO of Silicon Genetics, Mr. Akhtari led the team that developed GeneSpring and Varia, the most popular and widely used software packages for the visualization and analysis of genomics and genotyping data. These products are used by thousands of researchers in more than 600 leading pharmaceutical companies, academic institutions and major research organizations around the world. Silicon Genetics was recognized as one of the fastest-growing technology companies in North America with inclusion on the Deloitte Technology FAST 500. Silicon Genetics was acquired by Agilent Technologies in 2004. Mr. Akhtari has held executive management positions at several other life sciences software companies whose products include WinNonlin, GeneWorld, MacVector and PCGene.

Ilya Kupershmidt

Co-founder, VP of Products
Mr. Kupershmidt leads NextBio's product development, scientific computing and content teams. His team includes PhDs and MDs from leading academic institutions with extensive experience in bioinformatics, statistics, molecular biology, chemistry, and clinical research. Mr. Kupershmidt has a decade of experience in the design, implementation and integration of software solutions for organizations involved in basic and clinical research and drug discovery. Prior to NextBio, Mr. Kupershmidt was the Director of Professional Services at Silicon Genetics. There he helped develop and customize software solutions for the analysis and management of high throughput data generated by genomic, proteomic and genotyping technologies. Mr. Kupershmidt joined Silicon Genetics as an early stage startup and successfully worked with hundreds of academic institutions and commercial enterprises. Previously, Mr. Kupershmidt carried out research as a geneticist at the UCSD Howard Hughes Medical Institute where he studied transcriptional mechanisms of gene expression regulation during pituitary development.

Satnam Alag, PhD

VP of Engineering
Dr. Alag leads the company's engineering team and is responsible for software development, quality assurance and network operations. Dr. Alag is a seasoned software professional with over fifteen years of experience in machine learning and over a decade of experience in commercial software development and management. His areas of expertise include building large-scale distributed SaaS applications, search, applying intelligence and personalization to Web 2.0 applications and delivering high quality software. Prior to joining NextBio, Dr. Alag worked as a consultant with Johnson & Johnson's BabyCenter where he helped develop their personalization engine. Prior to that he was the Chief Software Architect and Director of Application Engineering at Rearden Commerce. Dr. Alag began his career at GE R&D and has held senior positions at Computing Technologies International and Black Pearl. Dr. Alag earned his PhD in engineering from UC Berkeley and has published a number of peer-reviewed articles. He is the author of the book Collective Intelligence in Action published by Manning in 2008.

Kevin G. Cronin

VP of Sales
Mr. Cronin leads NextBio sales with over 20 years of experience selling discovery and development software, research tools, services, and intellectual property to pharmaceutical, agrochemical, consumer and chemical companies. Prior to NextBio, he was Senior Vice President of Sales at Symyx Technologies, Inc., where he fostered the development of a corporate sales team serving the global Life Science, Chemicals, Energy, and Consumer Products marketplaces. Prior to Symyx, he was employed in a series of increasingly responsible sales-related positions at MDL Information Systems, a division of Reed Elsevier, from 1987 to 2001. He began his career at Rainin Instrument in 1986. Mr. Cronin holds a B.S. degree in chemistry from the University of Washington and undertook graduate studies in organic chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley.