MENLO PARK, Calif., April 29, 2020 — GRAIL, Inc., a healthcare company whose mission is to detect cancer early, when it can be cured, today announced the appointment of Satnam Alag, PhD, as Senior Vice President of Software Engineering. In his new role, Dr. Alag will be responsible for providing the leadership, strategic vision, and operational execution for GRAIL’s software teams.
“We are very pleased to welcome Satnam, who brings extensive experience in designing, building, and leading software systems within the genomics space,” said Matthew Young, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer at GRAIL. “Satnam will drive the development and execution of GRAIL’s software strategy, and will be a tremendous asset as we advance our multi-cancer early detection test with the ultimate goal of decreasing cancer mortality.”
“GRAIL is a truly innovative company that is leveraging the convergence of advances in genomics and machine learning to transform healthcare through the early detection of cancer,” said Dr. Alag. “I’m thrilled to join GRAIL and lead its best-in-class software engineering team. I look forward to supporting the development of its multi-cancer early detection test, and being part of the transition from screening for individual cancers, to screening individuals for all cancers.”
Dr. Alag joins GRAIL from Illumina, where he most recently served as Vice President of Software Engineering, Product Development. Over his tenure, Dr. Alag led the development of most of Illumina’s cloud software products and oversaw Illumina’s cloud product security, privacy, and clinical compliance. Prior to this, he was the Chief Technology Officer at NextBio, a big-data platform that aggregates and analyzes large quantities of phenotypic and genomic data that was acquired by Illumina in 2013. Dr. Alag has also served in other senior software architecture positions, including as the Chief Software Architect at Deem. Dr. Alag, who holds five AWS certifications, has approximately 24 years of software development experience, including in genomics and healthcare, with expertise in SaaS, machine learning, and clinical-grade software development. He is the author of the book “Collective Intelligence in Action” published by Manning. He received a BE (HONS) from Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, an MS from Rutgers University, and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.
About GRAIL
GRAIL is a healthcare company whose mission is to detect cancer early, when it can be cured. GRAIL is focused on alleviating the global burden of cancer by developing pioneering technology to detect and identify multiple deadly cancer types early. The company is using the power of next-generation sequencing, population-scale clinical studies, and state-of-the-art computer science and data science to enhance the scientific understanding of cancer biology, and to develop its multi-cancer early detection blood test. GRAIL is located in Menlo Park, California and Washington, D.C. It is supported by leading global investors and pharmaceutical, technology, and healthcare companies. For more information, please visit www.grail.com.