Dr. Merriman has 35 years of experience leading multi-disciplinary R&D programs in academia and industry, including 20 years in academia as a professor at UCLA, and 15 years in Industry, with a focus on developing technologies for Precision Medicine and Longevity. In academia, he pioneered the development of genomic technologies for studying the genetic basis of disease. In Industry, he led DNA Sequencing Technology Development for Life Technologies, overseeing over $1 Billion of advanced R&D efforts, including developing the first electronic-chip based sequencer—the Ion Torrent system, which remains one of the market leading DNA sequencing platforms. Dr. Merriman subsequently also developed chip devices for single molecule DNA sequencing—which recently launched as the Roche Genia platform—as well as founding and leading R&D at two spin-out companies that make highly advanced chip devices for diagnostics (Roswell) and genome engineering (Avery). Dr. Merriman has lead efforts in establishing national-scale programs for realizing the benefits of precision medicine. At Life Technologies, he led the architecting and execution of large-scale precision medicine programs in partnership with governments, including national-scale efforts for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the US Veterans Healthcare Administration.  Dr. Merriman was also VP of Global Technology Assessment at Human Longevity Inc., the leading healthspan extension company founded by genomics pioneer Craig Venter, where he led major programs in precision longevity medicine. Currently, in addition to developing biochip technologies at his companies, he is also an adjunct professor of synthetic biology at the J. Craig Venter Institute.