Introducing our ‘Lifetime Achievement’ award winner
Today we’re looking at the first of our 2019 award winners in a little more detail – Dr Michael Weiner who won our Lifetime Achievement award.
Dr Michael Weiner is Abcam’s Vice President of Molecular Sciences, having previously successfully founded and sold three companies: Affomix, acquired by Illumina in 2010; GnuBio, acquired by Bio-Rad in 2014; and AxioMx, acquired by Abcam in 2015.
During his career, Dr Weiner has delivered several extremely useful and well-received products into the commercial marketplace. He invented the first commercially available means for next-generation DNA sequencing and emulsion PCR (454 Life Sciences, now Roche). The methods have each been cited in over 50,000 scientific articles.
Dr Weiner’s additional inventions have also included a bead-based genotyping method, which he pioneered at GlaxoWellcome, (now GlaxoSmithKline) and improved methods for the production of monoclonal antibodies (Affomix) to name just a few.
Beyond his career as a scientist, Dr Weiner, was selected as the Entrepreneur of the Year (2016) for Connecticut by CURE (CURE is Connecticut’s Bioscience Innovation Network). He continues to give time and resources to training and mentoring multiple bioscience professionals throughout his local community of Connecticut.
Dr Weiner is also an artist, using clay, stained glass and recycled materials (including those from the lab such as pipette tips!) to create a range of beautiful products.
Dr Andrew Chalmers, founder of CiteAb, said: “The award recognises individuals who have made a significant contribution to the research reagent industry over a sustained period of time.
“Dr Weiner has a remarkable portfolio of achievements that have furthered our sector significantly throughout his career to date. Our judges were extremely impressed by the breadth of Dr Weiner’s impact and efforts and we feel he’s a very worthy recipient of this esteemed award. Our team wishes Dr Weiner and Abcam many congratulations.”
Dr Michael Weiner said: “I’m grateful and honoured to win this award. Delivering research with practical utility for bench scientists has always been my life’s goal and I cannot wait to see where the hard work and innovation of the people at Abcam takes the life sciences next”.
You can read more about all of our award categories and 2019 winners here: https://www.citeab.com/awards
– Katrina and the CiteAb team
