Mostafa Ronaghi

Mostafa Ronaghi was born in 1968. He earned his Ph.D. from the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden in 1998.

Ronaghi was a principal investigator and Senior Research Associate at the Stanford Genome Technology Center at Stanford University, prior to working at Illumina), where he focused on developing analytical techniques for molecular diagnostics. He is principal investigator for several grants including grants from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health for the development of array-based pyrosequencing.

In 1998, Ronaghi, Pål Nyren, and Mathias Uhlen described a solution-based variant of the pyrosequencing technology, and co-founded Pyrosequencing AB (renamed to Biotage in 2003). He co-invented molecular inversion probe assays, and co-founded ParAllele BioScience to develop this multiplexed technology for genetic testing. ParAllele was acquired by Affymetrix in May 2005.

In 2005, Ronaghi co-founded NextBio, a search engine for life science data. As of 2008, he was serving as the Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President at Illumina.

NextBio was acquired by Illumina in 2013. He also serves on the board of directors of IntegenX and Aurora Biofuels. In 2008, Ronaghi and Helmy Eltoukhy co-founded Avantome, a DNA sequencing company that was acquired by Illumina in July 2008.