Loralyn Mears joined Sun Microsystems in March 2000 as the Market Segment Manager for Discovery Informatics. In this position she is responsible for the development of Informatics as a vertical industry within Sun, and raising internal and external awareness of this emerging market. She is specifically interested in developing an end-to-end solution in informatics designed to support all aspects of research along the discovery pipeline. The key to this solution is developing partnerships with commercial, government, academic, and not-for-profit research organizations.

Prior to her current position, Loralyn was a scientific applications consultant at NetGenics, working with them as they emerged as a start-up and helping them to grow to ~100 people. Her research of clients' needs enabled product development to provide solutions for IT, informatics and experimentation. In this position, she consulted the Top 50 Pharmaceutical & AG companies, as well as the leading academic institutes.

In 1998 Loralyn was awarded a joint Ph.D. in molecular biology from Case-Western Reserve University & Queens's University, Ontario. Her academic career has provided a combination of scientific research and use of experimental technologies that make her an authority in this field. Her research has been published in academic and scientific publications and she has given presentations in the US, Canada and the United Kingdom.

She has launched the Sun marketing campaigns ".com Discovery", "Sun Discovery Informatics Partners Program", "Sun Informatics Advisory Council" and "i3c". These campaigns are targeted at fostering strategic partnerships between Sun Microsystems and leading commercial and not-for-profit organizations dedicated to informatics.

She was born, raised and educated in Canada. Her other academic achievements are a M.Sc. in Zoology from the University of Toronto and an Honours B.Sc. in Biology from Queen's University.