Affymetrix, headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., is one of the pioneers in creating tools that are driving the genomic revolution. Established in 1991, its GeneChip technology was invented in the late 1980s by a team of scientists lead by Stephen P.A. Fodor, Ph.D. The theory behind their work was revolutionary, a notion that semiconductor manufacturing techniques could be united with advances in combinatorial chemistry to build vast amounts of biological data on a small glass chip. These arrays are used to analyze complex genetic information by pharmaceutical, biotechnology, agrichemical, diagnostics and consumer products companies, as well as academic, government and other nonprofit research institutes. Affymetrix has more than 900 employees worldwide.