• BayBio (South San Francisco, California) reported the election of its new chairman and four new executives to its board for 2009. William Young, chairman/CEO of Mongram BioSciences, is the incoming chair of the BayBio board. The new board members include Pierre Cassigneul, president/CEO of XDx; Steve Engle, chairman/CEO of XOMA; John Melo, CEO of Amyris; and Howard Robin, president/CEO of Nektar Therapeutics. BayBio is an independent, non-profit 501(c)(6) trade association serving the life science industry in Northern California.

• Lew Bennett was named president of Custom Spine (Parsippany, New Jersey). Bennett, who will also serve on the board, has previous executive experience and board membership of several orthopedic and spine companies. Custom spine specializes in spinal implants and surgical instruments.

• Michael Pred was named VP of operations for Immucor (Norcross, Georgia). Pred most recently led all manufacturing in a multi-plant operation for vaccine production for Pfizer Animal Health. Immucor makes reagents and systems used by hospitals, reference laboratories and donor centers to detect and identify certain properties of the cell and serum components of blood prior to transfusion.

• Douglas Bryant has resigned as executive VP/COO of Luminex (Austin, Texas) to become president/CEO at Quidel. Luminex makes biological testing technologies with applications throughout the life sciences industry.

• Andrew Bolles was named director of business management for Zotec Partners (Indianapolis). Bolles spent the last four years as senior VP, national sales manager for Dominion Medical Management. Zotec Partners makes medical billing, practice management and radiology information systems software.