Louis Murray 

PRESIDENT

louis.murray@lrig.org

Louis Murray has spent over 20 years in the Bay Area focused on Lab Automation across various roles, including; current North Americas Sales Manager with the Lab Automation group at Thermo Fisher Scientific responsible for all commercial activities.  Automation Engineer at Exelixis, beta tested the GeneMachines RevPrep, Field Application Manager at Velocity11 building and supporting robotic platforms around the globe and Product Manager at Agilent Technologies for the automation portfolio and launched the Encore MultiSpan Liquid Handler.  Louis joined the LRIG Bay Area chapter in 2021 and accepted the role of Executive Chair in 2023.  Louis holds a Master of Science from the University of Aberdeen.

Jimmy Sastra

SECRETARY

jimmy.sastra@lrig.org

Jimmy Sastra, PhD, is CEO and Co-founder of Monomer Bio with two decades worth of experience building software-enabled biology labs and robotics software platforms. Monomer provides a reinforcement learning environment for AI companies to train, fine-tune, and validate their foundation models (virtual cell, toxicity, etc) with real biology experiments.  Previously, as founding engineer and VP of Engineering at Transcriptic (now Strateos), he brought up over 15 automated workcells for cell based assays and synthetic biology. He was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Willow Garage that built the world's most widely adopted robotics development platform called ROS. Jimmy earned his BS and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania where he worked on automated parameter optimization for physical systems.

Maureen Beresini

PROGRAM CO-CHAIR AND SCIENTIFIC ADVISOR

maureen.beresini@lrig.org

Maureen Beresini has 34 years of experience in drug discovery at Genentech where she is a Distinguished Scientific Manager in the department of Biochemical and Cellular Pharmacology. She leads a diverse group that develops and applies functional assays and automation solutions to support small molecule and large molecule drug discovery programs. Her career has focused on lead finding and early stage discovery projects. She has contributed to the establishment and implementation of automated systems and processes for conducting assays and managing samples. She appreciates continued opportunities for new learning on the job and thrives on clearing the path for others to do their work efficiently and effectively.

Maureen began her industry career with Syva Company, developing assays for therapeutic monitoring of immunosuppressive drugs. She received her doctorate in Biological Chemistry from the University of California Davis and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Cancer Research Institute at University of California San Francisco.

Michael Keebler

PROGRAM CO-CHAIR AND SCIENTIFIC ADVISOR

michael.keebler@lrig.org

Mike Keebler is currently the Associate Director of Applied Technologies at Kuhner Shaker, Inc., where he manages several product lines for North America, including the Kuhner TOM, the Kuhner Feeding Technology, the Kuhner OSB series, and the Kuhner MPS-Z Automated. Mike also manages Sales in the Bay Area and is the primary Application Scientist for Kuhner Shaker, Inc., specializing in hydrodynamics and the process parameters of a shaken cultivation. Prior to joining Kuhner in 2017, Mike was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, where he studied the signaling pathways of triple-negative breast cancer. Mike did his PhD at the University of Cambridge (St. John’s College) studying intracellular calcium signaling, and his BS at the University of Minnesota studying Neuroscience and Cell Biology. Mike joined the Scientific Advisory Board for the LRIG Bay Area Chapter in 2025.

Dave Wexler

SCIENTIFIC ADVISOR

dave.wexler@lrig.org

Dave Wexler is currently Senior Director, Process Development & Automation at Exact Sciences based in the San Francisco Bay Area where he is responsible for leading the Assay Development, Process Development, Systems Engineering and Process Validation teams to design, develop, implement, test and validate processes and instrumentation critical to enable complex molecular diagnostic testing in a clinical Reference Laboratory. He provides technology vision and strategy to enable histopathology and molecular laboratory operations to scale and increase efficiency Prior to Exact Sciences, over the course of 13 years, Dave served in leadership positions with increasing responsibility at CareDx. The most recent being Vice President, Automation Engineering where Dave led a multidisciplinary group of Automation Engineers, Software Engineers, RA/QA and laboratory operations personnel to implement laboratory technology to increase throughput 10x for a Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) based diagnostic test.

Key accomplishment at CareDx: Dave directed the successful implementation and validation of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) equipment, LIMS and data analysis software required to launch AlloSure®, a novel diagnostic test using cell-free DNA as a biomarker in a CLIA Reference laboratory. Additionally, Dave held a previous role as Senior Director, Clinical Informatics and Automation Engineering for CareDx. In this position, and earlier positions at CareDx and AGY Therapeutics, Dave was instrumental in the design and validation of new laboratory space for clinical and high-throughput drug discovery operations. Key to the ongoing success of CareDx, Dave worked closely with the head of Laboratory Operations to research, develop and validate new processes for increasing throughput and efficiency for processing of patient samples.

He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from University of Denver, his Doctorate in Physical Chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles and performed post-doctoral research at University of California, Berkeley.

Maggie Nakamura

BOARD MEMBER

maggie.nakamura@lrig.org

Anusha Chaparala

BOARD MEMBER

anusha.chaparala@lrig.org

Anusha Chaparala, PhD, is the Sr Manager, BD, at IMCS, where she partners with research labs and automation engineers to design and implement automated purification workflows. She earned her PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the University of South Carolina, studying ulcerative colitis and colon cancer, and conducted postdoctoral research at Northwestern University on ovarian cancer and drug resistance. As a board member of LRIG Bay Area, she leads communications and content initiatives to advance collaboration and innovation in laboratory automation.

Eric Cormier

BOARD MEMBER

eric.cormier@lrig.org

Tiffany Cheng

BOARD MEMBER

tiffany.cheng@lrig.org