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Serge Saxonov
Co-founder and CEO at 10X Genomics
Serge Saxonov is the Co-founder and CEO of 10X Genomics, a company he helped establish in November 2012. Under his leadership, 10X Genomics has developed innovative products that integrate hardware, chemistry, and software to enhance biological research and understanding of human health and disease. The company achieved product launch within three years of its founding, showcasing rapid development capabilities in the field of genomics.1
Educational Background
- Harvard University: Bachelor of Arts in Applied Mathematics (1995-1999)
- Stanford University: PhD in Biomedical Informatics (2000-2006)
Professional Experience
- 10X Genomics: Co-founder and CEO (2012 - Present)
- QuantaLife: Vice President of Applications (2010 - 2012), where he focused on diagnostics opportunities for digital droplet PCR technology.
- 23andMe: First Employee, Founding Architect, and Director of R&D (2006 - 2010), responsible for defining the initial product concept and building the early technology team.1
Saxonov's career reflects a strong commitment to advancing genomic technologies, making significant contributions to both academic and commercial sectors in the life sciences.
Highlights
I wanted to share with you a letter Ben and I wrote to help set the record straight and refocus on what really matters: our commitment to innovating for the scientific community.
We much prefer to focus on the substance of building great products and serving customers, whose work inspires and drives our team every day. However, we felt compelled to speak out after others have repeatedly spread false accusations impugning the integrity of our company.
We started 10x because we believed we could do meaningful work, take on really hard problems and bring valuable tools to customers around the world. We take tremendous pride in developing and delivering groundbreaking products that help researchers advance science and see biology in new ways.
We’re not here to stifle innovation; we’re here to fuel it. That’s precisely what we’ve done for more than a decade, and that’s precisely what we’ll continue to do moving forward. As I tell the 10x team all the time, we are still just getting started.
We were thrilled to host Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee at 10x for a conversation about his latest book, "The Song of the Cell." I’ve been a big fan of his since “The Emperor of All Maladies“, which was actually a key part of the intellectual milieu that inspired us since the earliest days of the company. “The Gene” was also amazing and absolutely worth reading, even if you know all the key characters and events – perhaps especially if you do.
A lot of the themes in Sid's newest book strongly resonate with what we do at 10x and how we think about the world. We've often said this is the Century of Biology. Sid goes a step deeper, writing that we're transitioning from the century of the gene to the century of the cell. The cell forms the basis for all of human physiology and disease.
If you aren't familiar with his work, Sid writes masterfully, with a particular eye for evocative metaphors that are also precise and scientifically rigorous. I'd encourage everyone to read his latest title, regardless of the depth of your scientific knowledge. If you are curious to learn more about the basics of biology and disease, the history of science, or the future of medicine, it’s all in there – laid out in beautiful prose.
