• Premier Research Group (Philadelphia) has named Bernard Sweeney as executive director, medical devices. Previously, Sweeny was director of healthcare at the British Standards Institute. Premier Research is a contract research organization specializing in therapeutics and operational expertise in clinical trial service.

• Shrink Nanotechnologies (Carlsbad, California) said that Bruce Conklin, MD, a senior investigator at the Gladstone Institute and professor of medical genetics and cellular and molecular pharmacology at the University of California San Francisco, and Kara McCloskey, PhD, professor at the school of engineering, University of California, Merced, have joined its Scientific Advisory Board. Conklin and McCloskey, respectively, bring their IPS (or induced pluripotent stem cell) and tissue engineering expertise to the Shrink's suite of biotechnology research tools, StemDisc and CellAlign. Shrink Nanotechnologies specializes in solar energy production, medical diagnostics and sensors.