The Chan Zuckerberg Biohub (CZ Biohub) announced Gajus Worthington has joined its management team as chief operating officer, bringing his more than 17 years of executive management experience in the life science sector to the nonprofit, medical research organization.

“CZ Biohub is poised to catalyze major biological discoveries at an unprecedented pace and contribute fundamentally in humanity's fight against disease,” said Worthington. “I am honored to be part of the amazing team Joe and Steve are assembling, and I’m eager to build out an operation that will help realize CZ Biohub’s incredible potential. This is a very exciting opportunity and I cannot wait to dig in.”

“Gajus brings a unique combination of technical and managerial experience that will help us evolve from our startup phase into a leading nonprofit research institution,” said Joseph DeRisi, co-president of CZ Biohub. “He managed Fluidigm as the company grew from its founding to many prosperous years as a publicly traded company. We are fortunate to have someone with that experience join our leadership team.”

Worthington was a co-founder of Fluidigm and served as president and CEO from 1999 to 2016. Prior to Fluidigm, he held a variety of engineering, marketing and management positions at Actel. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in physics and a Master’s degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University. He is an elected fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).

“I have known Gajus for many years and I couldn’t be more excited about having him in the role of COO,” said Stephen Quake, co-president of CZ Biohub. “It is rare to find someone with his intellect, passion for science and technology, and track record of building a successful organization. I worked with Gajus at Fluidigm and I look forward to working with him again as he helps us scale CZ Biohub.”

The CZ Biohub is an independent, nonprofit, medical research organization collaborating with the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University and the University of California, San Francisco to harness the power of science, technology and human capacity to cure, prevent or manage all diseases during our children’s lifetime.