Rover Labs was established by serial tech entrepreneur Mark Fasciano and Columbia Biomedical Engineering Professor Sam Sia to meet the NY-metro area's need for more efficient and comfortable COVID-19 testing. Mark and Sam also co-founded Rover Diagnostics, a Columbia University spin-out that was part of the NIH's Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) program to fast-track COVID testing innovation, which is developing an ultrafast point-of-care PCR test for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.
Sam Sia
CO-FOUNDER AND
CHIEF SCIENCE ADVISOR
Sam is one of the top experts in point-of-care diagnostics in the US.
He has developed technologies for point-of-care blood tests, wearable sensors, and implantable devices, both in an academic and industry setting. He co-developed a point-of-care blood test for prostate cancer which is being commercialized and has garnered FDA approval. Sam's research has received coverage from Nature, Science. JAMA, Washington Post, Science News, Popular Science, Chemical and Engineering News and has been featured on the BBC, NPR, and Voice of America. MIT Technology Review named him as one of the world's top young innovators in 2010, and he is an inducted fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. Sam is the founder of Harlem Biospace, a biotech incubator facility in New York City (developed with the NYC mayor’s office) that has hosted over 50 biotech companies. He also currently co-directs the entrepreneurship initiative for Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Sam has a B.Sc. in Biochemistry from the University of Alberta and a Ph.D. in Biophysics from Harvard University.
Mark Fasciano
CO-FOUNDER AND
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
Mark has decades of experience building and running successful biotech and software companies.
Prior to Rover, he served as co-founder and CEO of Clarapath, a robotic microtomy company that automates the most labor-intensive step of histology, the sectioning of anatomic pathology samples. Clarapath is now part of Northwell Health. Mark also co-founded FatWire software, an enterprise content management platform, and served as its CEO for over ten years. FatWire was acquired by Oracle for $163M. After FatWire, Mark helped fund and launch a variety of tech companies, including Clearpath Robotics and Touch Bistro. Mark won a regional E & Y Entrepreneur of the Year award (2000) and served on the NYS Regional Economic Development Council. He currently serves on the board of the Young Presidents' Organization Big Apple Gold chapter. Mark earned his BA from Cornell and his PhD in Computer Science/AI from the University of Chicago.
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