Mr. Knesel was a founder and officer in charge of operations for Biomedical Reference Laboratories, Inc., which started in 1969 and went public in 1979.  Mr. Knesel served as Senior Vice President of this business and its successor company Roche Biomedical Laboratories, Inc. through 1995. During his tenure at Roche, revenue grew to over $1 billion.  As Senior Vice President, Mr. Knesel’s responsibilities included strategic planning, laboratory direction, and management of operations, laboratory acquisitions and extensive regional/national organizational development.  Mr. Knesel was responsible as the chief scientific officer for laboratory technology selection, innovation and development for all areas of the clinical laboratory.  Mr. Knesel has had extensive experience in sales, marketing, and has demonstrated an acute awareness of market needs and its priorities.  He personally developed and directed a variety of highly successful differentiating niche businesses within Roche Biomedical Laboratories, which merged to create Laboratory Corporation of America in 1995.

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In 1989 Mr. Knesel founded Roche Image Analysis Systems (RIAS) as a subsidiary of Roche Biomedical Laboratories and successfully established this company as a leader in automated cytodiagnostics.  As the President of RIAS, Mr. Knesel developed a new automated thin‑layer cell preparation to improve the Pap smear and directed technology acquisitions and product development for microscopic cell-based image analysis.  Mr. Knesel was also founder and first president of AutoCyte, Inc., the successor to RIAS established with venture capital backing in 1996 and taken public in 1997.   Mr. Knesel was responsible for planning, direction and oversight of AutoCyte’s successful PMA approval and gained significant experience working with the FDA, Office of Device Evaluation in this and related efforts. Mr. Knesel left Autocyte in 2000.

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In 2001, Mr. Knesel started Select Diagnostics, Inc., which grew into a full service regional reference laboratory serving North Carolina and Virginia. This service laboratory successfully competed with the major labs and merged with Solstas in 2011 which in turn was acquired by Quest Diagnostics in 2014. During his tenure at Select Diagnostics, Mr. Knesel founded Select Laboratory Partners in 2003, Select Laboratories-South Carolina in 2006, and CellSolutions in 2007.

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Mr. Knesel received a BS in Biology and Medical Technology and an MS in Biochemistry from Fairleigh Dickinson University.