Leader of the genetics company Illumina, Francis is also an entrepreneur with two enterprise instant messaging startup successes: He co-founded and led Flash Communications, which was acquired by Microsoft in 1998, and led IMlogic, which provided archiving abilities for messages, and was acquired by Symantec in 2006. Francis joined Illumina in 2013 as president before his appointment as CEO and president in 2016. He completed both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In response to COVID-19, Illumina and the Illumina Corporate Foundation have committed $10 million to supporting community initiatives and research efforts to detect viral sequences. The company has also made a toolkit available to researchers to aid sequencing efforts.