Erna Barèl is one of the founders of BaseClear. Together with Bas Reichert she started the company in 1993 as alumni of Leiden University.
Erna and Bas experienced all the phases from a two-person starter to the biggest independent microbial genomics specialist in Europe. “While most of our co-students started a PhD or left biology, we wanted to stay in the field, not as scientists but as entrepreneurs. We both worked with sequencing technologies during internships and found expertise in these techniques was lacking amongst many users. This experience inspired us to start a service-oriented business for the analysis of DNA. After some market research, we came to the conclusion that there was no shortage of potential clients.” .
Erna Barèl studied Biology at Leiden University, majoring in Medical Biology, where she met Bas Reichert. Together they founded BaseClear in 1993. In addition to her various responsibilities within BaseClear in the last 3 decades, Erna has been the chairman of the Entrepeneur Society Leiden Bio Science Park (2011-2014), and she is currently member of the supervisory board Bioparner and supervisory board PLNT. She is co-owner of several companies, including Future Genomics Technologies, BaseGene and MyMicroZoo.
