Speaker Profile

Yongwei Zhang

Biography

Yongwei Zhang, Ph.D., serves as Executive Director of BGI Research, the R&D arm of BGI-Shenzhen, world’s largest genomics service company. He is also Chief Operating Officer of Complete Genomics (San Jose, CA), a wholly-owned subsidiary of BGI. Dr. Zhang has over 20 years of experience in optics-based instruments and systems. He began his career in Quinta Technologies developing optically-assisted computer hard drives. Quinta was later acquired by Seagate. He was a Co-Founder of telecom component startup company iolon, Inc, which has raised ~$100million VC funding. He joined biotech startup Guava Technologies in 2005, where he held positions with increasing responsibilities. Guava was later acquired by Millipore, subsequently by Merck KGaA. As Head of New Product Introduction at Merck Life Science division, he helped to develop and manufacture several generations of Guava flowcytometry instruments and reagent kits, including the award-winning Muse Cell Analyzer. In 2013, he joined Complete Genomics as Sr. Director of Engineering, responsible for the development of NGS sequencing platform BGISEQ series. Dr. Zhang is also a strong advocate for STEM education. He served as a Board Member of US nationally top-ranked Saratoga School Union District. Dr. Zhang received his B. Eng in Precision Instruments and B.Sc. in Applied Mathematics from Tsinghua University in Beijing, M.S. in Computer Sciences, M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD.

Presentation Title and Company Description

Genomic Profiling Showcase: Overview of BGI NGS Platforms: Instruments and Consumables
BGI is the world’s largest genomics center, experienced in genomic research, services and NGS platforms. BGI is uniquely positioned to support academia and pharma, agriculture and healthcare industries. MGI is a whole-owned subsidiary of BGI Group. MGI’s mission is to provide platform tools including NGS tools to meet our customers’ trans-omics needs.