Leadership Team

Paul Kruszka

Chief Medical Officer, GeneDx

Paul Kruszka, MD, is Chief Medical Officer of GeneDx, with responsibility for leading genomic research in rare diseases and promoting access to genomic medicine.

Paul is a board-certified clinical geneticist who uses genomic and precision medicine to enhance the delivery of healthcare to individuals with rare diseases. Paul’s career is motivated by the idea that genetic technology can be used to have a beneficial impact on people’s lives and that there are still many challenges to implementing genomic medicine.

Prior to working at GeneDx, Paul spent a decade at the National Institutes of Health conducting genomic research and taking care of individuals with rare genetic diseases. He is credited with the clinical and molecular delineation of multiple novel genetic conditions.

After attending medical school at the University of Michigan, Paul completed a family medicine residency at the University of Virginia. He also completed a clinical genetics residency at the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health.

gustavo stolovitzky

Chief Science Officer

Gustavo Stolovitzky is a world-renowned expert in computational biology, disease modeling and nano-biotechnology, with over 25 years of experience in high throughput data analysis for biology and the application of technology to solve biomedical problems.

As Chief Science Officer at GeneDx, Gustavo has a key role in developing the strategic research direction of the company and is responsible for advancing our platform of algorithms to help researchers, health system partners, providers and patients translate the information contained in health data into actionable knowledge. Gustavo held this same role at Sema4 prior to the company being renamed as GeneDx in January 2023.

Gustavo spent 23 years at IBM Research, where he was appointed IBM Fellow, the highest technical honor bestowed by IBM. His most recent role was the Founding Chair of the Exploratory Life Sciences Program at IBM Research and, previously, he was the Director of the Translational Systems Biology and Nanobiotechnology Program. He has authored more than 180 articles, reviews, and book chapters, and holds over 80 granted patents.

He is well known as the founder of the DREAM Challenges, where he nucleated a community of more than 25,000 researchers applying AI to biomedicine and championed the values of open science and data sharing, as well as rigorous evaluation of performance and reproducibility of algorithms. Through the DREAM Challenges and his own research, Gustavo addressed core challenges in biomedical research, with great influence in the areas of biological network inference, cancer genomics, and prediction of treatment response and disease outcome.

rong chen

Chief Health Informatics Officer

Rong Chen, PhD, is an expert in translational bioinformatics. Rong has over 20 years of experience developing bioinformatics databases, methods, software, and platforms to drive clinical and research applications in the academic, software, diagnostic, and biotech industries. He has published more than 110 papers in journals such as Nature Biotechnology and The Lancet.

As Chief Health Informatics Officer, Rong leads GeneDx’s informatics teams that are responsible for the structuring and management of genomic- and health-related data with health system partners, as well as the development of a health insight platform to engage researchers, clinicians, and administrators to improve the standard of care, an artificial intelligence platform to engage biopharma scientists for advanced analytics, and a genomic platform to scale up genetic testing. Rong held this same role at Sema4 prior to the company being renamed as GeneDx in January 2023.

Rong was previously an Assistant Professor in the Department of Genetics & Genomic Sciences and Institute of Genomics & Multiscale Biology, and Director of the Clinical Genome Informatics Laboratory at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Rong received his BS in Chemical Physics from the University of Science and Technology in China, his MS in Structural Biology from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his PhD in Bioinformatics from Boston University.

ke hao

Head of Statistical Genomics

Ke Hao, ScD, leads the company’s development of predictive models for complex human diseases. He is also a Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in the Department of Genetics & Genomic Sciences.

Ke’s research focuses on the genetic and environmental basis of human diseases, using translational statistical genetics and computational algorithms to mine massive datasets and deliver clinical insights.

mitch higashi

Senior Vice President, Health Economics & Outcomes Research

As Senior Vice President of Health Economics & Outcomes Research (HEOR) at GeneDx, Mitch Higashi is responsible for defining and implementing innovative strategies that determine product value and commercialization activities for the company’s genomic solutions, algorithms, and pharma support program. Mitch is also responsible for ensuring alignment with commercial and market access strategies, including evidence generation, pricing, and reimbursement. Mitch held this same role at Sema4 prior to the company being renamed as GeneDx in January 2023.

Before joining Sema4, Mitch was Vice President of HEOR at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) where his department generated evidence to support market access, medical strategy, and research in oncology, hematology, immunology, and cardiovascular disease. While at BMS, Mitch was selected to present the pharma perspective on price-value assessments to Congress.

Mitch has co-authored 20 peer-reviewed papers, including for JAMA. He has also served on the Board of Directors for the University of Washington Foundation and the ISPOR Health Science Policy Council.

Mitch was awarded a grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to conduct his doctoral thesis in pharmacogenetics and outcomes research. He is a graduate of the University of British Columbia, University of Washington, where he received his PhD in HEOR, and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

li li

Senior Vice President, Clinical Informatics

As SVP, Clinical Informatics, Li Li, MD, leads research and development focused on disease stratification, therapeutical target identification, and clinical predictive model/application development for rare genetic disorders and complex diseases. She has published extensively in the fields of precision medicine, bioinformatics, and clinical bioinformatics, with more than 90 peer-reviewed papers in top journals such as Nature Biotech, Science Translational Medicine, Journal of Clinical Investigation, and PNAS.

Li is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in the Department of Medicine. She is trained as both a physician and bioinformatician, with an MD in Clinical Medicine from the Dalian Medical School in China and an MS in Bioinformatics from Boston University.

murali mani

Chief Compliance and Privacy Officer

As Chief Compliance and Privacy Officer at GeneDx, Murali Mani is responsible for ensuring trust and transparency with patients, partners, and investors, driving policy and certifications and conducting audits to comply with key regulations, standards, and certifications. Murali held this same role at Sema4 prior to the company being renamed as GeneDx in January 2023.

Before joining Sema4 in 2020, Murali was the Director of Compliance covering privacy, security, and data governance at IBM Watson Health, where he built a quality and compliance program for an extensive portfolio of health products and services in more than ten countries. He also served as the Senior Privacy Officer for Philips Group Innovation, with responsibility for overseeing several hundred human subject studies across approximately a dozen countries.

Murali has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University. He also holds Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP) and Certified Information Privacy Manager (CIPM) credentials from the International Association of Privacy Professionals, and Project Management Professional (PMP) credentials from the Project Management Institute.

qi pan

Senior Vice President, Research & Development

Qi Pan, PhD, has over 16 years of experience in biotech and pharmaceutical Research & Development (R&D), with an in-depth knowledge of oncology and biotherapeutic drug discovery and development. Qi serves as GeneDx’s Senior Vice President of R&D, with responsibility for driving the next wave of research-led advances to augment our competitive edge with our healthcare systems and pharma partners, as well as delivering high priority research projects. Qi held this same role at Sema4 prior to the company being renamed as GeneDx in January 2023.

Before joining Sema4, Qi was Vice President of R&D at Legend Biotech, a leading biotech company, overseeing the discovery of innovative CAR-T therapy to treat cancer. Prior to that, Qi worked at leading pharmaceutical companies, including Genentech and Boehringer Ingelheim, on biotherapeutics discovery.

Qi received her PhD from Harvard University in the field of molecular and cellular biology.