Bio:

Ernie Coffey has more than 20 years of research operations and commercial experience in pharma, biotech, academic, and contract research organization environments. He began his career at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), where he was a part of the research team that completed the first human genome sequence. From TIGR, Coffey joined the original Rosetta Inpharmatics team responsible for developing microarray technology and manufacturing processes. He and his colleagues successfully transitioned this small startup technology into the Merck Gene Expression Lab (GEL), scaling the processes by orders of magnitude. Coffey led the implementation of the commercial infrastructure to transition GEL from a Merck resource to the Covance Genomics Laboratory (CGL), rapidly building a successful client services and project management organization. He was also the Director of Operations for CGL, where he had responsibility for all facets of operations and infrastructure at the Seattle site.

In 2012, Coffey expanded beyond the Seattle lab to become Director of Client Services for Covance Discovery and Translational Services, integrating commercial practices across North America for multiple businesses. In his most recent role at Covance, he led a global team of client managers and contract analysts supporting clients that included pharma, biotech, and academic accounts. Coffey obtained a BS in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Michigan and an MBA from the University of Washington.