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Ram Santhanam
VP, Product Management and Marketing
Ram Santhanam
VP, Product Management and Marketing
Ram is highly skilled at translating technology into enduring products that solve unmet customer needs. Over the course of his 15-plus years in life-science product management, marketing, and sales, Ram has brought in passion-driven expertise to successfully develop, launch, and grow a broad range of cutting-edge instrument and reagent products. His experience includes commercialization of next-generation sequencing products for Applied Biosystems (now part of Thermo Fisher) and sales management at RainDance Technologies (now part of Bio-Rad). Prior to joining Fluent, Ram played a pivotal role in growing a new clinical-genomics business group at reference-standards company LGC SeraCare.
Ram received a BS from Carnegie Mellon University, MS from Colorado State University and a MBA from Santa Clara University.
Robert Meltzer
Senior Director of Advanced Projects
Robert Meltzer
Senior Director of Advanced Projects
Robert brings to Fluent BioSciences over a decade of biomedical engineering and molecular biophysics experience in the development of advanced genomic-analysis technologies for applications in infectious disease, food safety, and cancer diagnostics. Specifically, he shepherds from ideation to implementation of novel technologies that integrate fluorescence detection, microfluidic systems, and sound molecular biochemistry. He served as a staff scientist at US Genomics and then as a senior scientist when that company became Pathogenetix. At Bio-Rad, Robert managed the microfluidics team.
Robert earned a BS from Texas A&M University, Ph.D. from Baylor College of Medicine, and completed his postdoctoral work at University of Alabama, Birmingham.
Kristina Fontanez
SVP of Product Development
Kristina Fontanez
SVP of Product Development
Leveraging her multidisciplinary background in molecular biology and microbiology, Kristina has been a dynamic leader in the development of novel commercial life-science and genomics products including an innovative DNA sequencing platform and multiplex PCR assays for a droplet microfluidics platform. Formerly, she was the principal scientist at Qiagen and, later, a senior scientist at Bio-Rad. She has deep expertise in assay development, biostatistics, bioinformatics, and all facets of the product development process, including agile-development principles.
Kristina obtained a BA from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from Harvard University; she completed postdoctoral work at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Sepehr Kiani
Founder, President and CEO
Sepehr Kiani
Founder, President and CEO
During his more than 25 years of leading business and technology organizations, Sepehr has helped build and grow multiple companies from startup-to-exit (generating valuations over $100 million) as well as successfully guided large-enterprise organizations. These include Teradyne’s fiber optics business unit (serving as founder, technical, and marketing lead), Helicos BioSciences (chief system architect and head of engineering), and GnuBIO (EVP of product development and as VP & General Manager after acquisition by Bio-Rad). He is a driven, hands-on decision-maker with broad technical, operational, market, and business knowledge. He holds over 40 pending patents in semiconductor automation, fiber optics, optical systems, fluids handling, microfluidics, molecular biology, gene sequencing, and single-cell.
Sepehr received a BS from California Polytechnic, and MS and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT.