Mostafa Ronaghi


Mostafa Ronaghi is an Iranian molecular biologist, specializing in DNA sequencing methodology. He earned his Ph.D. from the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden in 1998.
, he is the Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President at Illumina. Prior to this position, he was a principal investigator and Senior Research Associate at the Stanford Genome Technology Center at Stanford University, focusing on developing analytical techniques for molecular diagnostics.
He is principal investigator for several grants including grants from the National Human Genome Research Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health for the development of array-based Pyrosequencing.
In 1998, he described together with Pål Nyren and a solution-based variant of the pyrosequencing technology and co-founded Pyrosequencing AB. He co-invented Molecular Inversion Probe assay and co-founded ParAllele BioScience to develop this multiplexed technology for genetic testing. ParAllele was acquired by Affymetrix in May 2005.
In 2005, he co-founded NextBio, a search engine for life science data that was acquired by Illumina in 2013. He also serves on the board of directors of IntegenX and Aurora Biofuels. In 2008, Ronaghi and Helmy Eltoukhy co-founded Avantome, a DNA sequencing company that was acquired by Illumina in July 2008.

Publications

Among his approximately 50 peer-reviewed journal articles are the publications describing Pyrosequencing and Molecular Inversion Probe assays and other techniques:
He also holds about 20 patents.