Chad Robins, left, is co-founder and CEO of Adaptive Biotechnologies, which he co-founded with his brother, Harlan Robins, right, a theoretical physicist turned computational biologist who is the company’s chief scientific officer. (Adaptive Biotechnologies Photo)

— Adaptive Biotechnologies co-founders and brothers Chad and Harlan Robins are among the directors of a new life sciences SPAC.

The blank check company is called CM Life Sciences III Inc. and listed on the NASDAQ starting April 7. The SPAC is targeting companies in “three separate areas of the life sciences industry that are often fragmented — life sciences tools, synthetic biology and diagnostics.”

In an email to GeekWire, Chad Robins said his and Harlan’s involvement is “completely independent” from Seattle-based Adaptive Biotechnologies, which went public via a traditional IPO in 2019.

The brothers became involved through their connection with Eli Casdin, a long-time Adaptive Biotechnologies investor and founder of Casdin Capital. He is a sponsor and CEO of the new SPAC, which is the third blank check company from Casdin Capital and Corvex Management. The second has a merger agreement with proteomics platform SomaLogic, and the first has an agreement with genomic platform Sema4.

SPACs have surged in popularity since last year, with 308 SPAC IPOs already completed in 2021, including a number of life sciences and healthcare-related SPACs. Seattle-based Nautilus Biotechnology in February decided to go public via a SPAC led by Arya Sciences Acquisition Corp III.

“SPACs provide an alternative fundraising path that is a good option for a certain company profile,” Chad Robins said. “The quality of the sponsor and the target company profile matters.”

Matthew Kennedy, senior IPO market strategist with Renaissance Capital, said it isn’t uncommon for public company executives to join a SPAC board. He pointed to execs from QuantumScape and Uber joining Khosla Ventures Acquisition.

Kennedy said it can be worrisome when a management team at a company set to go public has too many board obligations, or conflicts of interest with other associated companies.

“If a CEO is sitting on five other boards, even if there’s no conflict, that would still be a distraction,” he noted. “However, while it may not be ideal, I think sitting on just one other board is common enough that we don’t ‘ding’ management much for it.”

In addition to serving as CEO of Adaptive Biotechnologies, Chad Robins is currently on the boards of AltPep, Headlight, Life Science Washington, and AdvaMedDx. Harlan Robins is chief scientific officer at Adaptive Biotechnologies and was formerly head of the computational biology program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

Lance Solomon. (Promethean Photo)

Seattle-based education technology company Promethean promoted Lance Solomon to chief product officer. He joined Promethean in 2018 and was most recently executive vice president of operations.

Prior to Promethean, Solomon was director of supply chain and procurement for Amazon Web Services and previously VP of supply chain at Logitech.

“Through my time leading operations and our customer success program, I’ve been fortunate enough to understand how Edtech must operate from a school and district point of view,” said Solomon. “I look forward to further developing our product strategy to fit the needs of education teams, driving student engagement, and success.”

Solomon takes over from Steven Halliwell, who recently departed and is now VP of worldwide sales at location data platform Mapbox.

— Longtime education technology consultant Frank Catalano has joined Santa Barbara, Calif.-based ParentSquare as chief marketing officer. He is based in Seattle.

Founded in 2011, ParentSquare is an engagement platform for K-12 students used by school districts, educators and families. The company also recently appointed former Amazon Web Services K-12 Education Leader Chad Stevens as chief strategy officer.

Catalano is also a former GeekWire contributor covering education technology, culture, science fiction, the arts, and the confluence of media & technology.

— New Tech Northwest Founder Brett Greene joined blockchain software development platform R3 as marketing lead of global developer relations. Based in New York, R3 was founded in 2014 and its software is used to facilitate blockchain networks in the finance, insurance and banking industries.

Greene founded the New Tech Northwest community in 2012 with Red Russak and previously ran the organization full-time.

Known for its meetup events, New Tech Northwest moved its community activities online at the onset of the pandemic. The organization plans to offer a hybrid of offline and online events in the future and recently appointed Wesley Yurovchak as marketing and community manager.

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