Marc Hansen was trained as a cell biologist, earning a PhD at Stanford University and completing a post-doc at Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah.

 

Dr Hansen led an academic career at Brigham Young University from 2005 to 2020 that included teaching and research, where he published work using a wide array of technical approaches from live cell imaging (including building a two photon microscope) to chemical genetics to proteomics.

 

Research at BYU labs is driven largely by undergraduate research assistants, which dynamic connected Dr Hansen with Marc Oddou. Dr Hansen's chemical genetics project led to his becoming involved in biotech, founding a cancer drug discovery company that ultimately produced a new compound now entering clinical evaluation.

 

Dr Hansen's proteomics project involved a grad student that spent a few months processing samples by mass spectrometry and several years analyzing the resulting data. Frustration with the pace of data analysis later led to building Magellan's tools.

 

Driven by an interest in using many different approaches to tackle difficult biological questions, he developed large data analytics understanding while on a 2012-13 sabbatical at the Systems Biology Group at Imperial College London.

 

Marc and Dan began interacting in 2013 in the context of a commercial technology innovation program that brought STEM majors together with business students, later joining forces to tackle mass spec data problems.