About Us

James I. Garrels, PhD
Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Garrels is CEO and cofounder of Garbrook Knowledge Resources, Inc. He has been a leader in various endeavors where the common theme is the development of online knowledge resources. Garbrook was founded in 2005 to provide integrated scientific, technical, and business information to the renewable energy industry. In the 1990s, Dr. Garrels was cofounder and CEO of Proteome, Inc., a company that curated the biological literature to create knowledge resources for biotech and pharmaceutical industries. The work of Proteome was extremely valuable for interpreting the first genome sequences, and it was acquired by Incyte Genomics Inc. of Palo Alto, CA in 2000. From 1978 to 1995, Dr. Garrels was Director of the Quest Protein Database Center at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, NY. There he helped to advance the field now called proteomics, a field in which large numbers of proteins can be separated and analyzed simultaneously. Dr. Garrels has numerous publications relating to proteome databases, biological curation, protein analysis of cancer cells, studies of nerve and muscle cells, and methods of proteome analysis.
Dr. Garrels received his BS in Biology and Physics from the California Institute of Technology and his PhD in Biology from the University of California, San Diego. His professional memberships include the American Society for Cell Biology, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the Genetics Society of America, the MIT Enterprise Forum, and the North Shore Technology Council. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Joan E. Brooks, PhD
Chief Operating Officer
Dr. Brooks is COO and cofounder of Garbrook Knowledge Resources, Inc. Garbrook was formed in 2005 to provide a one-stop source for scientific, technical, business and economic knowledge on issues of major societal importance. Prior to Garbrook, Dr. Brooks, along with Dr. James Garrels, were founders of Proteome, Inc., a successful knowledge company that provided comprehensive annotation for newly sequenced genomes, including the human genome. Proteome was a leader and innovator in the field of scientific curation. Its premier product, the BioKnowledge Library, set the industry standard for proteomic databases. Dr. Brooks was responsible for initiatives covering business development, intellectual property, and academic relationships. In 2000, Proteome, Inc. was acquired by Incyte Genomics, Inc. of Palo Alto, CA. From 1984 to 1998, Dr. Brooks was a Senior Scientist at New England Biolabs, Inc., Beverly, MA, where she invented several key bacterial cloning strategies, resulting in five patent awards. Dr. Brooks has numerous scientific publications and presentations in the fields of genomic information analysis and bacterial gene cloning, expression, and regulation.
Dr. Brooks received her BS in Biology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and her MS and PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Rochester. She did post-doctoral research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY.