RainDance Technologies Inc. (RainDance) has appointed Patrick Kelly to the newly created position of European sales director, effective February 16, 2009. Based in Manchester, England, Kelly will be responsible for introducing RainDance’s RainStorm technology platform to Europe. He will work with thought leaders in genomics research to adopt RainDance’s sequence enrichment solution and the RDT 1000 instrument.

In addition, Kelly will build the commercial sales infrastructure required to launch the company’s solutions in the European market.

Kelly joins RainDance from Helicos Biosciences where he served as global business manager for the company’s European operations. In this role, he led the positioning of the company’s next-generation sequencing technology with opinion leaders in the region. kelly previously was business team manager, Europe, Middle East, Africa, for Agilent Technologies. He also was European site manager and vice president, sales and support, for Affymetrix Europe, where he led commercial activities for microarray systems and reagents in the research, pharmaceutical, and molecular diagnostics markets, and served as European sales manager for genetic analysis systems at Applied Biosystems. Kelly received a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from Sheffield University and is a member of the Institute of Directors (UK).

“Mr. Kelly’s appointment represents an important step in the geographic expansion of our commercial efforts with the first quarter release of our Sequence Enrichment Solution for the targeted sequencing of the human genome,” said Stephen E. Becker, vice president, commercial operations, RainDance Technologies. “His international business experience in life sciences and genetics and sequencing makes him the ideal candidate to lead RainDance’s entry into the European market.”