Natera Co-Founder and Executive Chairman Matthew Rabinowitz Named 2024 R&D Leader of the Year

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Natera, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTRA), a global leader in cell-free DNA and genetic testing, today announced that its co-founder and executive chairman, Matthew Rabinowitz, PhD, has been named R&D Leader of the Year by R&D World.

Established in 1963, the R&D 100 Awards program identifies and celebrates the top 100 revolutionary technologies of the past year. R&D World also has five professional awards given to individuals and/or teams, which in 2024, includes the award for Dr. Rabinowitz.

In awarding this honor, R&D World referred to Dr. Rabinowitz as a “pioneering figure in genetic testing and precision medicine.” The organization cited numerous achievements throughout his career at Natera, highlighting the company’s efforts to shape how diseases are detected and managed globally. This includes the development and launch of multiple transformational products, such as: Panorama™, a prenatal blood test that screens for common chromosomal conditions and has supported millions of healthy pregnancies worldwide; Signatera™, a blood test to detect cancer recurrence at a molecular level, which has helped hundreds of thousands of cancer patients; and Prospera™, a blood test that evaluates the risk of rejection of a transplanted kidney, heart, or lung.

As noted by R&D World, Dr. Rabinowitz holds numerous patents and has authored or co-authored multiple publications in prestigious journals. These include Nature, Science, Nature Medicine, The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA Oncology, and The Journal of Clinical Oncology.

“This is a tremendous honor, largely thanks to the dedicated teams who have transformed fields such as women’s health and cancer care,” said Dr. Rabinowitz. “At Natera, investing in R&D to drive innovation is a core part of our mission-driven heritage. I share this award with my extremely talented colleagues at Natera and my other companies, who have an unwavering commitment to the patient and family behind every sample. I’m happy to also congratulate my fellow R&D award recipients.”

Matthew Rabinowitz: Biographical Information

Matthew Rabinowitz is co-founder of Natera and currently serves as Executive Chairman of the Company’s board of directors. He served as Natera’s Chief Executive Officer from 2005 to 2019. He also serves as chairman of the board, director or adviser to multiple technology companies and nonprofits involved in diagnostics, biotech, AI and nature conservation; he is on the board of the foundation of the American College of Medical Genetics and invests in a technology fund focused on healthcare. Companies he founded have twice received the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer awards, given in those years to 20 worldwide, thrice received Edison Awards in the United States, and he has received the Scott Helt Award from IEEE. Dr. Rabinowitz has served as consulting professor in Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford and visiting faculty in Genetics at Harvard. He has served as Principal Investigator on six research grants from the National Institutes of Health and has authored hundreds of patents and publications including journals such as Nature (Cover), IEEE Transactions, Bioinformatics, Science, JAMA Oncology, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Human Reproduction, Molecular Human Reproduction, Fertility and Sterility, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Genome Medicine, Nature Cancer and Nature Medicine. Dr. Rabinowitz has led the development of multiple non-invasive prenatal tests which have transformed pregnancy management; a technology that tracks an individual patient’s tumor mutations in blood that has transformed cancer management with multiple FDA breakthrough designations; the first whole genome polygenic modeling of embryos to prevent conferring disease risks to our children and other breakthrough products. Dr. Rabinowitz studied EE and Physics at Stanford, receiving the Levin and Terman awards, the top academic awards offered by each department, and a graduate fellowship to the school of engineering, where he completed a PhD in Electrical Engineering. Follow Matt Rabinowitz on X and LinkedIn.

About Natera

Natera™ is a global leader in cell-free DNA and genetic testing, dedicated to oncology, women’s health, and organ health. We aim to make personalized genetic testing and diagnostics part of the standard of care to protect health and inform earlier, more targeted interventions that help lead to longer, healthier lives. Natera’s tests are validated by more than 250 peer-reviewed publications that demonstrate high accuracy. Natera operates ISO 13485-certified and CAP-accredited laboratories certified under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) in Austin, Texas, and San Carlos, California. For more information, visit www.natera.com.