Dr. Barnard contributed significantly to the founding and growth of Illumina and is currently the Vice-President of Technology & Development in the Research organization. He is responsible for all phases of research that feed the Product Development funnel with market-leading innovations in an array of technology for genotyping and next-generation DNA sequencing. He holds over 90 issued patents globally, more than 20 pending patents as well as 2 trade secrets. He has over twenty-five years of experience in the biotechnology industry. He has worked at Ciba-Geigy (now Novartis) in Basel, Switzerland and Ciba-Corning Diagnostics located in Medfield, Massachusetts where he was the Project Leader and Senior Staff Scientist respectively, responsible for developing and managing optical sensors with novel chemistry and materials.
Dr. Barnard received his Ph.D. in Chemistry under the mentorship of Professor David R. Walt (currently the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard Medical School) at the University of Tufts in Massachusetts.