James Serum

Dr. Serum received a B. A. in Chemistry from Hope College in 1965 and was awarded a Ph.D. degree in Organic Chemistry in 1969 from the University of Colorado. His doctorate research was directed toward studies in Mass Spectrometry. Following his graduate studies, he taught and did research at the University of Ghent, Belgium. He spent a year at Rice University as a Welch Fellow, and then joined the staff at Cornell University as Director of the National Institutes of Health High Resolution Mass Spectrometry Facility.

Dr. Serum joined the Hewlett-Packard Company in 1973 as Applications Chemist for Mass Spectrometry. Since then he has held a number of management positions, including Technical Support Manager for Mass Spectrometry in Europe (Paris, France); Marketing Manager for Mass Spectrometry and Spectroscopy at the Scientific Instruments Division; R&D Manager at the same division; and R&D Manager for the Avondale Division (Laboratory Automation and Chromatography Instrumentation). Since 1984 he has held Business Unit level positions as Operations Manager for Laboratory Automation Systems, Automated Chemical Systems Operation and Analytical Group Research & Development Manager. In 1992 Dr. Serum was named General Manager for Mass Spectrometry, Infrared, and Protein Chemical Systems. He was the founder of HP’s Bioscience Products business. He has served as chairman of HP's Bioscience Council, co-chairman of the Hewlett-Packard R&D Council and the Pharmaceutical Business Council. He retired from Hewlett Packard in August 1999 to co-found Viaken Systems Inc, where he was a Director and served as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Dr. Serum has been a Venture Partner with Flagship Ventures and until retiring in 2011, served as President of Scitek Ventures, a science and technology consulting firm that he founded in 2002. In 2002 he was elected as a lifetime National Associate of the National Academy of Sciences and in 2004 he was elected to serve on the Visiting Committee for Advanced Technology of NIST. In 2005, Dr. Serum was named to the President’s Advisory Board for Advanced Technology at the Research Corporation. He has served as a member of the Board of Directors for a number of emerging technology based companies. In 2008, he was elected as Chairman of the Visiting Committee for Advanced Technology for NIST. Dr. Serum retired from his company, Scitek Ventures in 2011. He remains actively involved in the future of science and technology in the US and has testified several times in Congress related to this topic. In 2013, Dr. Serum organized and chaired a National Workshop at NIST on advanced technology related to an improved measurement “diagnostic” for Lyme disease. Although officially retired, Dr. Serum remains active in research collaborations with Johns Hopkins Medical School and NIST involving improved detection methodologies for Lyme disease. He is also a science and business advisor to a young company, GenPro, involving technology for detection of a variety of very early stage cancers and other diseases. Dr. Serum serves on the Board of Directors of the non-profit organization, tranSMART Foundation, which is a member-driven non-profit foundation developing an open-source / open-data community around the tranSMART and OpenBEL translational research platforms.