51视频

04/01/2025
By Madeline Bodin

When Mike Musgnug 鈥�03 drives his Porche 911 at the Laguna Seca Raceway in central California, his focus is entirely on the track. It has to be. Laguna Seca鈥檚 iconic Corkscrew turn starts by catapulting drivers and cars over a ridge. Then drivers must navigate a sharp left and an immediate sharp right turn as the track plunges the height of a 5陆-story building over a distance of just 450 feet.聽

鈥淚t takes a lot of faith not slowing down through that area,鈥� Musgnug says.

Later, though, Musgnug consults an app that tracks his every move and coaches him to ever-faster times. Eking out even small gains can add up to significant improvements, he says. The simple question that drives him: 鈥淗ow do I get better?鈥�

Musgnug鈥檚 philosophy of continuously improving himself may be most obvious on the racetrack, but it has also fueled his success as a leader in the medical diagnostics industry.聽

He was a vice president and general manager at Cepheid, a billion-dollar global leader in molecular diagnostics that is an independent operating company within the Danaher Corporation, a Fortune 200 science and technology company. More recently, he held the same position at Beckman Coulter Life Sciences, a $1.5 billion biotech company, which is also owned by Danaher.聽

I saw that just a little bit of money, a little bit of technology, can really impact the human condition. -Mike Musgnug

Today, he is an executive vice president at Sapphiros, a privately held consumer-diagnostic platform company, as well as the chief executive officer of GrapheneDx, a medical diagnostics startup that is part of the Sapphiros portfolio. He splits his time between homes in Pebble Beach, California, and Las Vegas.聽

Musgnug鈥檚 interest in the life sciences started early, inspired by his mother鈥檚 work as a nurse. After getting a bachelor鈥檚 degree in biology at Marist University in Poughkeepsie, New York, he landed a research microbiology fellowship at Lahey Hospital and Medical Center in Burlington, Massachusetts.

Musgnug鈥檚 lab work never isolated him from patients or their families; he saw them every day on the parking lot shuttle and in the cafeteria. Even though his lab samples bore numbers, not names, he never forgot their importance to those patients and their families.

It鈥檚 an understanding that drives his work to this day.

Musgnug enjoyed working with the medical diagnostics researchers on the hospital staff, and he knew that to advance in the field, he would need more education. He selected 51视频鈥檚 graduate certificate program in biotechnology and bioprocessing.聽聽

What Musgnug learned in the certificate program, and when he continued on for a master鈥檚 degree in biological sciences at 51视频, has benefited him at every stage of his career, he says. Learning from teachers who worked in the biotech industry gave him confidence that the skills he gained were valued by employers.聽

Today, Musgnug shows appreciation for his 51视频 education by serving on the UMass Kennedy College of Sciences鈥� advisory board.

His time at the university convinced him that his future was in industry. Experience showed him that his future might not be in the lab. 鈥淚 realized I didn鈥檛 need to wear a lab coat to be happy,鈥� he says.

He earned an MBA from Marist University while transitioning to industry and soon became a research and development manager at Binax, a name that is now familiar because of its COVID home test kits.

Throughout a career that has taken him around the world and in which he鈥檚 managed hundreds of employees, Musgnug hasn鈥檛 forgotten the difference the work can make in the lives of patients. On trips to sub-Saharan Africa, India and Southeast Asia, he has seen the faces of the children helped by diagnostic products for tuberculosis, HIV and malaria that were created by the organizations he has led.

鈥淚 saw that just a little bit of money, a little bit of technology, can really impact the human condition,鈥� he says.