LabKey brings proven commercial software design and development experience to bear on the computing problems that scientists face.
The LabKey team has worked together since 1989 in lead technical roles at Microsoft, Westside, and BEA Systems. Our core expertise is in commercial-quality software development. Team members have received 24 software patents and published many peer-reviewed papers. We collaborate with biologists, immunologists and bioinformaticists to build and support systems that process and manage biomedical research data. Our team spun out of a proteomics lab at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in 2005. More history.

Partners
Matthew Bellew Matthew Bellew began his career at Microsoft leading the team that developed QJet, the query processor for Microsoft Access. He migrated QJet into SQL-Server and later led the SQL-Server languages team. In 1999 he co-founded Westside with Mark Igra and George Snelling, where he served as CTO and lead developer. When BEA Systems purchased Westside in 2001, Matt became Director, Development on BEA WebLogic Workshop. He joined the Hutch in 2003 working for Martin McIntosh, where he built the STEDI MS2 analysis and viewing engine. Matt graduated from Harvard in 1989.
Josh Eckels Josh Eckels is experienced in security-related projects, client-side end user applications, and server-side development. Prior to joining LabKey, Josh worked most recently on Amazon.com's data warehouse, developing the software that schedules and executes loading and querying of more than 30 terabytes of data. Before that, he was the team lead for the debugger for BEA System's WebLogic Workshop. At LabKey, he focuses on mass spectrometry, experimental annotations and general infrastructure. Josh has a BS in Computer Engineering from Northwestern University.
Peter Hussey Peter Hussey worked at IBM from 1983 to 1987 in technical sales, then joined Microsoft in 1989 where he led the program management team on the first two Microsoft-developed releases of SQL Server. Peter joined Westside as a partner in 1999, where he designed the security and data access layers of the Westside platform. He joined BEA after Westside was acquired as Director Product Management, WebLogic Workshop. Peter's primary expertise lies in architecting efficient, scalable use of relational databases from application programs. He holds a bachelor's degree in physics from Dartmouth and an MBA from Harvard.
Mark Igra In 1988, Mark Igra led the development of the first version of EndNote, a tool that has remained the leading citation management software for decades. He joined Microsoft in 1989, where he was Lead Designer on Visual Basic 1.0, Visual Basic for Applications, COM Automation, and Excel. With George Snelling and Matt Bellew, Mark founded Westside, where he was the lead software designer. After BEA acquired Westside, Mark became Director of Program Management for BEA WebLogic Workshop, a software development tool that won a variety of industry awards. In 2003, Mark joined the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, where he worked on a software platform for the Cancer Center's early detection initiative. He graduated in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Britt Piehler Britt Piehler joined LabKey in August, 2005. Prior to LabKey, Britt worked as the script engine lead at Westside, the lead developer and manager of BEA's Weblogic Workshop source editor team, and lead software engineer of Amazon.com's Data Warehouse team. At LabKey, Britt has worked as Software Engineer and Development Manager, with a focus on LabKey's specimen tracking and observational study modules. He now keeps an eye on the day-to-day operations of the company and works closely with many of LabKey's clients. Britt holds a BA from Carleton College, where he double-majored in Mathematics and Computer Science, and an MBA from the University of Washington.
Adam Rauch Adam Rauch joined Microsoft in 1989 as a Program Manager, leading the design and development of the first two versions of Visual Basic. He was Group Program Manager for NetMeeting, Microsoft's Internet conferencing client, and Passport, Microsoft's distributed Internet authentication system. Adam joined the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in 2003 where he developed a repository and analysis system for all tandem mass spectrometry data. Adam holds a BS in Computer Science from Northwestern University, and strokes a wicked bass for the Shed Boys.
Team
Nick Arnold Nick Arnold joined LabKey in March, 2010 after months of collaboration with the LabKey team through his work at Protein Advances Inc. He graduated from Seattle University with a BS in Computer Science and a BA in Humanities in 2008. Nick got his start in biological computing when he joined the Seattle University Summer Research program where he helped work on modeling transcription sites in M. tuberculosis. Following two years of research Nick joined the team at Protein Advances Inc as a Software Developer working on proteomic compression, formulation data analysis, and IR spectrum throughput. His interests outside of computing include aviation, cycling, hiking, and a heavy dose of baseball.
Rylan Bauermeister Rylan grew up between two countries, spending two years attending Italian public school in Bergamo, IT. While there he gained a sense of perspective on the world, and developed a desire to do what he could to help the people around him that would later drive his interest in biomedical informatics. In high school he displayed an aptitude for mathematics along with science and literary studies, which he carried to college where he received his BS in Computer Science, along with a minor in English and a concentration in Biology. He graduated in April of 2012, and joined Labkey as a software engineer the following October. Outside of work, Rylan enjoys rock climbing, cooking, traveling, and writing.
Dave Bradlee After graduating from Union College (NY) with a BS in math and computer science, Dave Bradlee spent 8 years in the Boston area developing Fortran, Pascal and C compilers for minicomputers at Data General and embedded microprocessors at Boston Systems Office. After moving to Seattle in 1985, Dave earned a PhD in computer science from the University of Washington in 1991. While still in graduate school, Dave began working at Microsoft and continued there through 2008. Highlights of his time there include over 7 years as developer and development lead on Visual Basic for Applications and Visual Basic 4 thru 6, where he wrote most of the compiler back end; almost 5 years as development lead and development manager in the Natural Language Group, where he managed a team of linguists and developers building grammar checkers and other language components; and 5 years as development lead in Visio, where he developed the pivot diagram feature and various other components. In the last 3 years, Dave spent some time working for Wellzio, a disease management software startup, and developed Dave's Redistricting web application, the only free application that enables anyone to draw congressional and legislative districts using actual census data and election data. Dave and his wife have both climbed more than 100 Washington peaks and have two teenage children.
Trey Chadick Trey earned his B.S. in Computer Science from Western Washington University. Trey began his career in 2006 as a Development and Test Engineer for Microsoft. He started working with the hardware test tools group on a variety of projects, including the Sidewinder and Lifecam series of products. He later joined the SQL Server Test Execution team, the last line of defense for Microsoft SQL Server QA. In his free time, he enjoys nerdy board games, bicycling and listening to podcasts.
Brian Connolly Brian Connolly first worked at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, where he built computers and networks flexible enough to work both in the lab and out at sea onboard research vessels. Brian's varied experience ranges from designing the datacenter infrastructure of Westside.com to being the Technical Architect for Cray Inc's IT department to being the Project Manager responsible for successfully satisfying all the requirements for Sarbanes Oxley Act compliance within Cray Inc's IT department. Before joining LabKey, Brian worked at Microsoft designing software tools and consulting engagements to help Microsoft's largest customers operate their IT infrastructures more efficiently and for less cost. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Physics from Hartwick College and a Master's degree in Coastal Oceanography from SUNY at Stonybrook. Brian is also ITIL certified.
Kristin Fitzsimmons Kristin Fitzsimmons comes to LabKey with 10 years of experience as a software developer, project manager, and Scrum Master. Prior to LabKey, she worked for OCS, Inc., where she helped create data collection, data ingestion, and benchmarking solutions for hospice and home health agencies. Kristin has a BA in Computer Science from Dartmouth College, but has also dabbled in biology and sociology. Outside of work, she enjoys horseback riding, scary movies, and pretending to be a runner.
Ben Hackett Ben Hackett joins LabKey software with a diverse administrative background from coordinating business projects for a local software start-up to starting and running his own business. An experienced geographic researcher, Ben worked at the University of Oregon using GIS software to track river migrations. He is now excited to combine the challenges and rewards of administration with the world of scientific research and analysis. Previously Ben worked at a Seattle based software company supporting strategies to create serviced based user interface and control systems for large-scale Audio/Video implementations. In his free time Ben enjoys sailing on his sailboat, riding his bicycle and playing the banjo.
Steve Hanson Before joining LabKey, Steve Hanson worked on the documentation teams at Westside, BEA, and Oracle. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Washington, specializing in ancient Greek philosophy. When not at work, he experiments with old school large format film photography. He is currently represented by the Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles.
Dax Hawkins Dax Hawkins joined Microsoft in 1993 with a bachelor's in electrical engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder. His adventures there took him across data land writing both native and managed stacks to access the world's data whether it be relational, unstructured, or somewhere in between. After stints as a development lead and manager on the SQL Server team and picking up his master's in computer science from UW along the way, Dax switched gears from enterprise to consumer space and joined the Xbox team in 2005. There he was the engineering manager of an incubation team, ran the Indie games publishing platform dev team, and was the principal developer responsible for speech recognition on Kinect. Dax is excited to join LabKey and parlay his experience into helping the scientific community.
Kevin Krouse Kevin Krouse began his career at BEA as a member of the Weblogic team. He contributed to the test and development of various projects while at BEA which include: Workshop Knex runtime, JavaScript E4X extensions to Mozilla Rhino, and Apache XMLBeans. In 2005, Kevin joined Microsoft to design and develop the XMLSchema editor in Visual Studio 2008. In 2007, Kevin joined LabKey, where he enjoys contributing to AIDS research and building software for flow cytometry. Kevin holds double bachelor degrees from Whitman College and Washington University in St. Louis where he majored in Mathematics and Computer Science.
Ren Lis
With professional experience spanning accounting, legal support, project management and technical writing, Ren Lis brings years of experience to LabKey. As Business Manager, Ren handles HR, and financial and grants management. If you want to know something about a number, she’s the one to ask. Ren holds a Bachelor of Arts from The Evergreen State College and is currently working towards her master's in design strategy and innovation. Outside of LabKey, she designs, builds, and exhibits sculptural furniture.
Karl Lum Karl began his career at Boeing where he developed flight control software for Boeing's military projects. He also worked for WRQ as the development manager for the Reflection X Windows team and later helped develop Nimble Technology's data integration suite. At BEA, he worked with many of the LabKey staff as a member of the Weblogic Workshop team. Karl earned his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Washington, where he studied both computer science and engineering.
Cory Nathe Cory Nathe joined LabKey in April, 2011 after beginning his career in 2007 as a member of the Atlas Science Portal Team for the Statistical Center for HIV/AIDS Research and Prevention, a division of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. For SCHARP, Cory worked as a study data manager for the Atlas portal and later focused on client-side application development for several networks including: CHAVI, CAVD, HVTN, HPTN, and MTN. Cory graduated from Augsburg College, where he holds a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics. In his free time, he enjoys watching and playing several different sports, most notably basketball and baseball.
Elizabeth Nelson Elizabeth Nelson handles outreach and manages LabKey's documentation and publications team. She completed her Ph.D. in Biological Sciences at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station, where she was a National Science Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellow. At Stanford, she used statistical models for turbulent mixing to address questions in marine conservation biology. After completing her PhD, Elizabeth joined Microsoft as a Program Manager. She worked on the first release of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), part of the .NET Framework, and received two patents. Elizabeth also holds a B.S. in Civil & Environmental Engineering from Stanford University, where she received the Terman Engineering Award.
Avital Sadot Avital Sadot joins LabKey with an extensive scientific experience in computational biology. She received her PhD from the Computer Science department at The Weizmann Institute for Science in Israel in 2008, where she developed modeling platforms and computational models of complex biological systems. She moved with her family to Seattle in 2010 and joined the Institute for Systems Biology as a postdoctoral researcher, where she worked on information theory inspired applications for analysis of dynamics of models of biological systems. Avital holds a M.Sc. in Bioinformatics from The Weizmann Institute for Science, where she worked in the Molecular Genetics department focusing on evolutionary comparative genomics, and a B.Sc. in Life Sciences from Ben-Gurion University in Israel.
Elizabeth Van Nostrand Elizabeth "Li" Van Nostrand wanted to be a biologist when she grew up, but discovered she enjoyed programming more than lab work and moved into computer science instead. After many years testing at traditional software companies (most recently Adobe's SaaS infrastructure), she is happy to finally be able to use her biology degree in the service of her programming at Labkey. She has a BA from Cornell University with a double major in Computational Biology and Computer Science. Post college she continues to informally study both of these, as well as economics, psychology, and martial arts.
Alan Vezina Growing up Alan was always interested in the various fields of science. Though, after taking a few programming classes he shifted his focus towards the field of Computer Science, earning his B.S. in Computer Science from The University of Michigan. Alan is pleased to find himself at LabKey, where he enjoys using his programming skills to help further scientific research. Prior to joining LabKey, Alan spent 4 years as a computer technician where he helped develop custom software and methods for diagnosing and repairing computers. When not at work, you can find Alan riding his bike, cooking, drawing, or programming for fun.
Extended Team
In addition to the people listed here, LabKey draws on a large network of trusted professional colleagues, all of whom we have worked with for years. These colleagues bring skills in software development, testing, project management, documentation, graphics design, network operations, and training. All are available for reference.
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