Mr. McLeod has served as President and Chief Executive Officer of 454 Life Sciences since February 2005. Previously, he served as Executive Vice President of CuraGen from November 1999, where he oversaw bioinformatics, strategic business development, and collaborative research, including the negotiation of strategic partnerships with Abgenix, Bayer and TopoTarget A/S. Prior to joining CuraGen, Mr. McLeod spent three years as Chief Executive Officer of Havas Interactive (formerly Cendant Software), a leading international software developer whose annual revenues increased in excess of 60 percent to over $500 million during his tenure. Prior to heading Havas Interactive, Mr. McLeod served as Executive Vice President and Director at CUC International where he was President of the CompuCard division, marketing affinity membership programs with partners including Citibank, Sears, Bank One and Chase. CompuCard was recognized on the Inc 100 list of fastest growing public companies.

Mr. McLeod earned his B.S. Magna Cum Laud with a dual major in economics and engineering and applied science from Yale University and his M.S. in management from the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mr. McLeod serves on the boards of Sacred Heart University, Fairfield College Preparatory School and the CT Yankee Council, Boy Scouts of America.

Mr. Dacey was involved in the company's initial formation and fund-raising efforts. Prior to joining 454 Life Sciences in July 2000, he served as the Chief Financial Officer, Director of Finance and Treasurer of CytoTherapeutics, Inc., and Stem Cells, Inc., publicly held medical device development and stem cell discovery companies. Prior to that, Mr. Dacey served in various management and staff positions with Ernst & Young LLP. Mr. Dacey earned a Bachelor of finance and business administration from the University of Rhode Island.

Dr. Egholm joined the 454 management team from Molecular Staging, where he served as Senior Vice President of Research and Development. While at Molecular Staging, Dr. Egholm led the development of the REPLI-g single tube whole genome amplification product as well as their industry leading blood protein profiling platform. Prior to that, Dr. Egholm was at Applied Biosystems working on Peptide Nucleic Acids, of which he was a co-inventor. Dr. Egholm earned a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

Dr. Margulies joined 454 Life Sciences from Nascent Ventures LLC, a private consultancy he co-founded to provide management expertise to technology-driven companies. At Nascent, he focused on companies using MEMS technology in the biotech and medical device arena. Prior to that, he was Director of Engineering, and then Director of New Technology Research at Perkin-Elmer's Instrument Division. Earlier, as Associate Director of the Hubble Space Telescope project, he directed all engineering activities at Perkin-Elmer for one of NASA's largest and most successful scientific payloads. Dr. Margulies earned a B.Sc. in Engineering from the Free University of Brussels, in Belgium, and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Columbia University.