Leadership  |  Mission  |  History  |  Quality Assurance  |  Careers

Daniel D. Dechert,

Founder & CEO

Daniel D. Dechert is the President and Chief Executive Officer of NanoScreen, LLC. Mr. Dechert has extensive experience in the Life Sciences industry, gained from working as Consumables Product Manager for PerkinElmer Life and Analytical Sciences. At PerkinElmer Life, Daniel was responsible for the consumables product line, the multi-channel dispense head manufacturing department, assigning R&D projects, set pricing, and working with customers to provide needed products to the marketplace. Prior to PerkinElmer, Daniel worked at Packard BioScience in Torrance, California where he planned, directed, developed, and implemented the pipette tip molding division. In this role, Daniel gained extensive manufacturing experience to complement his Mechanical Engineering background.

Daniel grew up working in a family business specializing in Aerospace and Medical devices, while gaining experience as a government contractor. His first practical experience was working at Dynamic Design and Development. Here he designed and manufactured robots for physicists that were in need of robotics and water tanks to simulate conditions for radiation therapy machines used in Oncology departments of major hospitals all over the country.

Imad Mansour,

CSO

Imad Mansour is a co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of NanoScreen. After earning his Bachelor of Arts in Biology at the University of California San Diego, Mr. Mansour began his scientific career at Wyeth's High Throughput Screening lab. While there, he spent a significant part of his time developing and implementing fully automated and semi-automated biological screens. Seven years with Wyeth allowed him to gain a deep level of experience with many of the robotic platforms and assay formats common to Drug Discovery. With his intimate involvement in bringing up Wyeth's HTS facility, Mr. Mansour participated first hand in working through many of the early scientific, strategic, and technical challenges faced by any new HTS effort. With time, Mr. Mansour came to focus his interest on developing new solutions for automating the most challenging assay types. Wishing to build upon this interest, he left Wyeth to join CCS/Packard in Torrance, California. His position as Lead Applications Engineer brought him into regular contact with many of the most difficult automation needs of HTS labs from around the world. Working directly with both end users and CCS/Packard's engineering and software teams, Mr. Mansour ensured that each system produced fulfilled the unique application needs of each customer.

Building upon his combined experience in both research and industry, Mr. Mansour brings to NanoScreen a well developed understanding of the automated lab, as well as a vision of new technologies and solutions to further advance the tools available to scientists.

William S. Westin,

Retained CFO

William S. (Bill) Westin operates part-time as NanoScreen, LLC's Chief Financial Officer. Throughout his successful 25 year career in financial management, Mr. Westin has held the positions of CFO, Treasurer, and Controller, as well as serving as Chief Operating Officer for a manufacturing start-up. The companies he has been a part of range from a $5 billion dollar national beverage distributor to a multi-location truck dealership to telecom technology to young manufacturing companies, with entrepreneurial owners running a majority of these companies.

Bill's accomplishments also include installing computer and payroll systems. His educational background includes a BS in Computer Systems with an MBA in Finance. Professional designations include CMA. Currently, Mr. Westin provides Retained CFO duties and assistance with financing packages for his clients.

Michael Dechert,

Principal Design Engineer and R&D Director

Michael Dechert is the Principal Design Engineer and Research and Design Director. Michael's interest in manufacturing started at a young age. At the age of 14, Mike produced a fully functional robotic 3 axis robotic arm - manufacturing all components in the machine shop himself. After attending California State University Fullerton for Mechanical Engineering, Mr. Dechert started his career designing complete assemblies for dental implant applications. His assemblies were manufactured from Titanium and he specialized in developing new techniques (process development) to achieve very tight tolerances with very small parts (also improved speed of production). Mike also worked closely with manufacturing programming and overseeing the operation of several different multi axis Swiss style screw machines. He solved several issues with extremely precise fiber optic assemblies using his extensive knowledge of surface finish practices.

In 1998, Mike was offered a challenging position at Carl Creative Systems as lead programmer and design engineer. There he utilized his talent to miniaturize the syringe mandrels and at the same time tripled the output of the Swiss style screw machines by reducing cycle times. Mr. Dechert continued to design a variety of new products while facilitating production as Carl Creative Systems became CCS Packard and then PerkinElmer Life Sciences. Mike Dechert joined NanoScreen, LLC in 2003 and has designed some of the smallest syringe components on the market today.

Brett DeSilva,

Engineer and Design Specialist

Brett DeSilva is an Engineer and Design Specialist for NanoScreen, LLC. Brett brings with him over 10 years of experience in the laboratory automation business. As a talented designer and manager, he has led several large scale engineering groups and liquid handling projects for one of the largest life science companies in the US. He brings with him a strong knowledge of the liquid handling industry and a level of customer awareness that makes him an invaluable addition to the NanoScreen team.

Dennis McCormack,

Systems Engineer

Dennis McCormack is a Systems Engineer for NanoScreen, LLC. With over 12 years of experience on the manufacturing side of the Liquid Handling industry, Mr. McCormack brings with him a wealth of knowledge and capability. At CCS/Packard, he supervised the Dispense Head Department for over six years. He later went on to become the principle mechanical and software test engineer overseeing and coordinating the fit and finish of every liquid handling system prior to shipment. With the PerkinElmer buyout of CCS/Packard, Mr. McCormack found a new home in the R&D department - where he was the principle SQA engineer for PE's flagship HTS system, the LumiLux. His varied and in-depth knowledge of liquid handling robots and software, make him an invaluable asset to the NanoScreen team.

Peter Hutchings,

Director, Global Sales

Peter Joined NanoScreen in January 2008. Peter has nearly 20 yeas experience selling solutions into the LifeScience industry both in Europe and the United States. Prior to joining NanoScreen Peter was the West Coast Business Director for RTS LifeScience, successfully implementing large, integrated, drug discovery platforms covering Ultra High Throughput Screening, sample storage and Protein Crystallography. Prior to joining RTS Peter was Director of Strategic sales at CCS Packard, Torrance CA. (now part of PerkinElmer LifeScience) and European Sales Manager for RTS. Prior to RTS Peter held sales positions at Packard Bioscience and Tecan in the UK. Peter obtained his BSc (Hons) at North East London Polytechnic, majoring in Clinical Biochemistry and Medical Microbiology. Following university Peter worked in assay development at ABRO (Now the Roslin Institute) and in Oncology at Charing Cross Hospital, London.