23andMe, Inc. announced the appointment of Robert Gentleman, Ph.D., as vice president of computational biology. Dr. Gentleman joins 23andMe to focus on the exploration of how the human genetic and trait data in the 23andMe database can be used to identify new therapies for disease. Most recently, Dr. Gentleman served as senior director of bioinformatics and computational biology at Genentech.

In addition to broadly overseeing computational biology activities at the company, Dr. Gentleman will specifically focus on collaborating with Dr. Richard Scheller, 23andMe chief science officer and head of therapeutics. He will work with Dr. Scheller and others to help the newly formed therapeutics group utilize data analytics and theoretical models to identify trends and ultimately advance the drug research and discovery process.