Company Management Team

NextBio's management team consists of experienced life science and technology industry executives from companies such as Agilent, Johnson & Johnson, GE, Illumina, Kaiser Permanente 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.

Ilya Kupershmidt

Co-founder, VP of Products
Mr. Kupershmidt leads NextBio's product, scientific computing and content groups. His team includes PhDs and MDs from leading academic institutions with extensive experience in genomics, computational biology and clinical research. Mr. Kupershmidt has a decade of experience in the design and implementation of genomic solutions for organizations involved in basic and translational research, as well as 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 and proteomic 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. Mr. Kupershmidt is currently a PhD candidate at the SciLifeLab Institute, in Stockholm, Sweden.

Satnam Alag, PhD

Chief Technology Officer and 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.