Andrew Hessel
Andrew and Stephanie, Banff, Alberta, January 2006
About
I am a consulting biologist and author interested in synthetic biology and open source biology. To my mind, DNA is a programming language that scientists have been working to reverse engineer with increasing success. Synthetic biology allows forward engineering, permitting scientists to write code de novo and allowing logical, fully understandable evolution of biological outputs ranging from single proteins to, eventually, synthetic cells and synthetic organisms. I advocate the use of open source principles because in software development these ideas have led to robust code, highly skilled developer communities, and non-monopolistic pricing. If the same results can be achieved in genome engineering, it could potentially create a more diversified and sustainable biotechnology industry. These ideas are explored in Open Sources 2.0, published by O'Reilly.
Background
I received my MSc. in bacterial genomics from the University of Calgary in 1995. I joined the Amgen Institute, a 120 person research facility located in Toronto, Canada, as a bioinformaticist and manager. Working as a bridge between the Institute, Amgen Canada, and Amgen Inc. (Thousand Oaks, CA), I facilitated dozens of advanced research projects involving microarrays, genetic sequence analysis, and data mining. Today, the Institute, no longer affiliated with Amgen, is known as the Campbell Family Institute for Breast Cancer Research. In 2002, I co-founded of Miikana Therapeutics and helped create the virtual business model they successfully used. Miikana was sold to Entremed in December, 2005 for $21 million plus milestones.
Contact Information
email: ahessel (at) gmail (dot) com (the best way to contact me)
Skype: search for "Andrew Hessel", ahessel (at) gmail (dot) com
Letter post:
Andrew Hessel PO Box 57 Eagle Lake, Ontario Canada K0M 1M0
