Tom Willis

Tom Willis is the CEO of Arima Genomics, a precision oncology firm he joined in June 2025 following a $22 million Series C funding round led by Illumina Ventures. Previously, he spent a decade as a Venture Partner at Illumina Ventures and founded two genomic startups that achieved successful corporate exits. He served as CEO of ParAllele BioScience until its acquisition by Affymetrix in 2005, and later led Sequenta through its 2015 merger with Adaptive Biotechnologies. Willis began his career directing technology development at the Stanford Genome Technology Center during the Human Genome Project after earning a PhD in Physics from Stanford University and a BS in Physics from Yale University. His current focus centers on scaling next-generation sequencing diagnostics and spatial DNA technology to transform cancer diagnosis and therapy selection for oncology patients.