Daniel M. Root, Ph.D

Dr. Root received his Ph.D. in 1997 in Computational Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, WI. Upon completion of his doctoral degree, Dr. Root accepted a position as Senior Programmer at Molecular Simulations Inc. (MSI) in San Diego. At MSI, Dr. Root was responsible for developing software to understand and explore chemical reactions by combining quantum and molecular mechanics calculations with chemical database technology. Dr. Root's work was incorporated into MSI's Cerius 2 product, which continues to be the leading modeling and simulation environment for cheminformatics. Dr. Root then joined Aurora Biosciences Corporation where he was Manager of HTS Informatics. At Aurora Dr. Root worked in close collaboration with discovery scientists and was responsible for the design and development of the corporate discovery screening database and its associated applications. Dr. Root was also responsible for the integrity and transfer of discovery data to Aurora's corporate partners.

Lora Heiner

Ms. Heiner is an expert in High and Ultra-High Throughput Screening (HTS, UHTS) and drug discovery research, with over 10 years of industrial laboratory and laboratory management experience in the biotech industry. Most recently, Ms. Heiner was employed as Director of Lead Discovery by X-Ceptor Therapeutics Inc., which she joined in September 1999 as its fourth employee. During her tenure at X-Ceptor, Ms. Heiner was instrumental in the deployment of the research facilities and established a state of the art HTS facility for drug discovery research on human intracellular receptors. These accomplishments enabled X-Ceptor to secure a multi-year corporate partnership with Sankyo Co., Ltd. Previous to X-Ceptor, Ms. Heiner held a management position with Aurora Biosciences Corporation, as Associate Director of Discovery Operations. Ms. Heiner joined Aurora in December 1996 and was responsible for implementation of a HTS operation which included reducing Aurora's proprietary assay methods from concept to production using traditional 96-and 384-well based formats. Ms. Heiner was responsible for developing the required informatics, compound handling infrastructure and automation for execution of Aurora's internal and corporate partnered high throughput screening assays. Ms. Heiner was a key contributor in the implementation of Aurora's ultra high throughput screening system, and prior to her departure in 1999, published the first report of cellular and biochemical fluorescence assays in the ultra low volume high density 3,456 well microtitre plate. Ms. Heiner also held a management position with Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc. where she was responsible for various HTS projects using Ligand's proprietary intracellular receptor assays with the aim of identifying leads for cancer applications. While at Ligand, Ms. Heiner was a key contributor in the identification of a new SERM (selective estrogen receptor modulator), which is now in Phase II/III clinical trials. Ms. Heiner received her B.Sc. in Molecular Biology and Molecular Genetics from the University of Toronto in 1989.

Exegetix Inc. was founded in 2000 by Dr. Daniel M. Root and Lora Heiner. The founders have over 30 years of combined experience in areas of computational chemistry, biology, and informatics. Over the years, Exegetix has built on this experience and now offers flexible and robust solutions for working with all kinds of data. Our application frameworks deliver flexible, configurable solutions that are sure to keep pace with dynamic business and technology environments. Call us today and find out how we can help you with your data and information challenges. We look forward to hearing from you!