The Jackson Laboratory announces promotions of Auro Nair, Ph.D., to Executive Vice President and Ken

The Jackson Laboratory (JAX) today announced promotions of two top leaders whose contributions have been integral to the Laboratory’s growth of collaborative research and investment in innovations to enable discoveries in the research community to happen faster.

JAX President and CEO Edison Liu, M.D.,

In making the announcement, Liu praised both leaders’ strategic thinking, operational acumen and deep commitment to fostering innovation and creative partnerships.

“I have immense respect and admiration for what Ken and Auro have accomplished in their respective roles – and mostly importantly, what they have helped JAX accomplish together,” Liu said. “Through their leadership, they have dramatically expanded JAX’s collaborative research and advanced integration, creating a virtuous cycle in which our drug discovery enabling models and research services advance science and our own discoveries enhance what we offer to the global scientific community.”

An example of this virtuous cycle is the nonprofit’s efforts to create more impactful Alzheimer’s disease models. The MODEL-AD Center, an ambitious project to develop and distribute precise mouse models of late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (AD), is a collaborative effort led by JAX faculty Gareth Howell, Ph.D., and Greg Carter, Ph.D., along with colleagues at Indiana University and Sage Bionetworks. The Center exemplifies JAX’s growing expertise and leadership in developing models for drug discovery and precision medicine using genetically diverse mouse populations, including JAX’s Collaborative Cross and Diversity Outbred mice.

Fasman joined JAX’s leadership team in May 2015 as vice president for strategic initiatives, subsequently becoming vice president for research. He had previously served on JAX’s Board of Scientific Counselors, the nonprofit’s external scientific advisory board. Fasman has worked in close partnership with the scientific directors for JAX’s Bar Harbor and Farmington, Conn., campuses to guide the research program’s unprecedented growth, including an increase in the number of faculty from 49 to 71 in three years and a corresponding increase in grants and publications. Prior to joining JAX, Fasman was chief scientific officer of the Adelson Medical Research Foundation, and before that spent a decade at AstraZeneca, where he was director of drug development strategy and performance and vice president for R&D informatics.

Nair has been with JAX since 2007, progressively holding positions of increasing responsibility and was promoted to president of JMCRS in 2017. He has led JMCRS to an impressive level of sustained growth, innovation and financial stability, all while focusing on operational excellence, quality, and empowering the global biomedical community. In his new role as executive vice president for JAX, Nair will continue to lead JMCRS and assume responsibility for the entire portfolio of research models, services and the veterinary medical team. Prior to joining JAX, Nair was vice president for worldwide marketing and North American sales for Caliper Life Sciences (today part of PerkinElmer), and before that had been in various scientific management roles at Glaxo in Singapore.