About the AEGiS Founder

Eric Miller, Ph.D.

Dr. Eric Miller has been involved in innovative molecular biology techniques for the last 20 years.

Dr. Miller attended undergraduate school at Wayne State College in Wayne, NE. There he was part of the IDeA Network for Biomedical Research Excellence research training program. This program provided resources and opportunities for smaller college students to engage in high-level research. During this time, Dr. Miller was involved in several different research projects including comparing different models of HIV-encephalitis, developing a derivative of adamantane for antimalarial treatments, and virulence factor regulation between two serotypes of L. monocytogenes, a food-borne pathogen.

After graduation, he attended the University of Nebraska Medical Center where he pursued a doctoral degree in microbiology genetics. His main project focused on characterizing small non-coding RNA molecules and their role in virulence of S. aureus and F. tularensis. He received a postdoctoral fellowship position with the University of Nevada Reno. There, his research was on S. pyogenes virulence factor regulation. After a few years, he pursued a position as a research scientist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service. The primary research involved associating the spread of antimicrobial resistance genes after giving antibiotics to animals. Most recently, he has been a Research Scientist in the R&D department of Elanco Animal Health. The studies work on the development of companion animal vaccines and testing new innovative areas, such as therapeutics. While here, he was tasked with starting and running a core for molecular biology. This included developing PCRs (to GLP standard) and a Next-Gen sequencing core with an Illumina MiSeq platform.

Wanting to put his assay development knowledge from Elanco to use, he set out to create his own parental DNA testing company and AEGiS DNA, LLC was born.

GoFundMe

When I set out to start this company, my goal was to be able to perform the Research and Development with no outside investment capitol. By doing this, I would be able to keep costs to the costumers at a more reasonable price. For several months, I was able to maintain and build the methods I would need to perform these tests. Then, I had a critical piece of equipment fail, the gel imager I had purchased. This equipment is used to capture the image of the gel through the use of fluorescent indicators.

Therefore, I have started a GoFundMe page to enlist help in raising the support funds to either fix the current equipment (e.g. replace the camera) or to purchase a new/used gel imager that has a working camera. I greatly appreciate any support that can be given to achieving one of these goals so that the AEGiS DNA business can start to provide parental DNA testing results to parents.