Robert Perkinson

Robert is a cryogenic expert with over 20 years of GLP and GMP experience gained at leading Fortune 500 companies. He has a proven track record of using innovation and automation to reduce the operational costs and occupational risks of biorepositories while simultaneously improving the integrity, chain-of-custody, and secure storage of specimens under his watch. He has led several successful campaigns focused on reconciling, centralizing, and digitizing large collections of diverse biological assets and their associated metadata.

As Global Head of Biological Archiving at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Robert led a team of international scientists tasked with creating, qualifying, storing, and distributing biological samples to the company’s global scientists, affiliates, and external partners. Under his leadership, GSK became the first pharmaceutical company to automate tube-level cryogenic storage and retrieval of biologic assets housed in ultra-low temps.

Before GSK, Robert was Head of Cell Biology and Lab Support Services at Centocor. Upon their acquisition by Johnson & Johnson (J&J), he subsequently held senior scientific roles at J&J’s Janssen division. He was responsible for the forecasting and financial oversight of an annual operating budget exceeding $15 million. This included leading operational support for biorepository operations, banking activities, bioreactor growth trending, and associated quality control for clinical pipeline and marketed therapeutic biologics. He holds two medical patents and has authored or co-authored multiple peer-reviewed articles in leading scientific journals.

At TMRW, Robert directs a concerted and conscientious effort to fundamentally change how clinics store, retrieve, and track precious fertility cells. He leads specimen management of biorepository activities, specimen logistics, specimen reformatting, and inventory services, and acts as the biorepository operations liaison for all TMRW-affiliated biorepositories.