ELabNYC Mentors

Olivier Couronne is executive director at the JP Sulzberger Columbia Genome Center, where he manages all aspects of the Next-Generation Sequencing Center’s activities, including technology improvement, quality control, workflow tracking, financial management, and business development. He is also responsible for all administration, financial management, and business development for the High-Throughput Screening Center.

Dr. Couronne’s background includes extensive experience in both genomics and entrepreneurship. After completing his PhD in information technology and theoretical chemistry at the Ecole Normale Superieure, University of Paris, he pursued postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2001 he became a computational genomic researcher in the lab of Eddy Rubin at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute in Berkeley. While there, he led and completed the comparative analyses necessary to sequence three complete chromosomes in the context of the Human Genome Project, and was an author of 15 scientific publications. He later completed the Columbia Business School MBA program in Health Care and Entrepreneurship, and then founded his own company in cancer genomics.