Vium Appoints Wendel Barr As CEO And Strengthens Executive Team

SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Vium, the first and only Digital Vivarium™ company, today announced that its Board of Directors has appointed Wendel Barr as Chief Executive Officer (CEO), effective immediately. Barr joins Vium from the clinical contract research organization (CRO) SynteractHCR, where he served as CEO and board member for more than six years. Prior to SynteractHCR, Barr was at global CRO Covance for 10 years, serving as Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President for the last three years of his tenure. Barr succeeds Vium Co-founder Timothy L. Robertson, Ph.D., who will remain at Vium in a consulting role to enable and support a successful transition.

In addition to recruiting Barr as CEO, Vium has also added several new senior executives to the team as the company moves into an accelerated growth phase with continued commercial expansion. Vium hired Alan Findlater as Chief Commercial Officer, formerly of Charles River Laboratories and Covance; David Hutto, Ph.D, as Vium’s first Chief Scientific Officer (CSO), previously CSO of Charles River, as announced earlier this year; and Tom Hoster as Chief Financial Officer (CFO), formerly CFO of eNeura.

“As Vium continues to seize significant commercial opportunities with its novel digital approach to discovery and translational science, we have attracted accomplished senior leaders to deliver on the promise of the platform,” said Dr. Annalisa Jenkins, MBBS, MRCP, and Executive Chairman of the Vium Board of Directors. “We’re thrilled to have recruited Wendel Barr to apply his deep industry expertise, which will allow Vium to pursue the most promising growth opportunities. At the same time, we recognize Tim Robertson, who, along with Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Joe Betts-LaCroix, has unlocked the vision for a new approach to discovering new medicines and positioned Vium for a new phase of success.”

Vium is revolutionizing the conduct of preclinical research with its first-ever automated Digital Vivarium™ and Smart Housing™, technologies that enhance study reproducibility and the ability to initiate and monitor studies 24/7 from anywhere, anytime. At the forthcoming national meeting of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science (AALAS) in Austin, Tex., from October 15-19, the company will unveil new product offerings that will allow customers to improve the efficiency and productivity of their own research labs.

“I’ve been in the contract research business for many years, and I believe that what Vium has built is truly transformative,” commented Barr, whose experience also includes leadership positions at GE Healthcare. “I am honored to join the distinguished team at Vium, and to carry the torch that Tim Robertson forged as the company’s founding CEO. I look forward to working closely with Tim and the entire executive team as I settle in at Vium.”

“I am proud of what we’ve accomplished thus far, and am confident that Wendel and the expanded leadership team have the requisite industry knowledge and talent to take Vium to the next level of success,” added Dr. Robertson. “We all share with our pharmaceutical R&D partners a vision to transform in vivo research with technology, radically improving drug discovery and development, resulting in the creation of new therapies so that people live longer and healthier lives.”

About Vium, Inc.

Vium is the first company to create a living informatics platform for preclinical in vivo drug research. The Vium Digital Vivarium™, incorporating Vium Smart Housing™, Vium Cloud infrastructure, and online Research Suite software, empowers scientists to optimize advances in bioengineered research models in ways previously not possible. Vium is fully accredited by AAALAC International and received an unprecedented AAALAC commendation for upholding the “3 Rs,” the gold-standard framework for humane animal research. Customers run the spectrum of biotechnology, pharmaceutical and computational drug discovery companies, academia, and novel therapeutic labs. Vium is backed by leading investors, including Lux Capital, Data Collective, Dolby Family Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, and Founders Fund.

Vium is headquartered in San Mateo, California. For more information, please visit www.vium.com.