Executive Profile: Cliff Reid of Complete Genomics

Cliff Reid graduated from MIT at 20 with a degree in physics, but he knew he didn’t want to be a physicist. He went to Harvard Business School but was unsatisfied. Then he enrolled in what is now Stanford University’s management science and engineering program, and he “caught the Silicon Valley bug.” Reid sees his professional career in three overlapping areas — physics, where he tried to understand the universe; computer science, where he tried to understand the nature of how the brain makes decisions; and now computational biology, where his 250-employee Complete Genomics is trying to help researchers understand the origins of life.