SAN DIEGO, March 11, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- BioNano Genomics announced today the appointment of Mr. Joel Jung as chief financial officer.  Mr. Jung has more than 17 years of experience in corporate finance and executive leadership of private and public biotech companies. <br /><br />"Joel is an experienced finance executive who has spent nearly two decades guiding financial strategy in the high-tech and biotechnology industries," said Erik Holmlin, president and CEO of BioNano Genomics. "Joel's experience will be a great addition to the management team as we further advance the Irys System to be the leading technology platform for understanding genomic structural variation."<br /><br />Before joining BioNano Genomics, Mr. Jung was CFO of Agraquest, Inc., a private, VC-backed company where he led the company's finance, accounting and information technology groups. During his tenure, he helped complete the successful sale of the company to Bayer CropScience. Prior to his role with Agraquest, Mr. Jung was CFO and treasurer of Celera Corporation, a publicly-traded company, having led the financial activities for the spin-out from an operating division of the Applera Corporation.  Previous to Celera, he held several executive financial positions with Chiron Corporation including vice president of Finance for the Blood Testing Division, and vice president and corporate treasurer.  Joel holds an MBA in finance from the University of California, Berkley as well as a B.S. degree with distinction from Purdue University in aeronautical and astronautical engineering. <br /><br />About Irys<br /><br />Irys makes it possible to routinely and accurately detect genomic structural variation and to finish genome assemblies. The fully automated Irys benchtop instrument uses the IrysChip to uncoil and confine long DNA molecules in proprietary Nanochannel Arrays™ where they are uniformly linearized in a highly parallel display for high-resolution, single-molecule imaging. Irys does not employ DNA fragmentation or amplification, which are typical with next-generation sequencing. The result is sequence information over extremely long "reads" ranging from hundreds of kilobases to a megabase, where the sample's valuable structural information is preserved. Irys makes it possible for researchers to directly observe structural variants including replications, deletions, translocations and inversions.<br /><br />About BioNano Genomics<br /><br />Headquartered in San Diego, BioNano Genomics is delivering an altogether better way of gaining a fully informed understanding of genomes. The Company's platform provides researchers and clinicians the most comprehensive, organized and actionable picture of a genome with unprecedented insights into how the individual components of genomes are ordered, arranged, and interact with each other. BioNano Genomics works with institutions in life science, translational research, molecular diagnostics and personalized medicine. The Company is supported by private investors and grant funding from genomics programs at federal agencies, including the NIH and NIST-ATP.