"You can have the wrong guy with the right instrument, " says Peter Schultz, Symyx's founder and now a director.

FORBES: Upstart Symyx is shaking up the stodgy chemicals industry.

Three years ago Novartis was able to recruit Peter Schultz, a chemist from UC, Berkeley, to head its Genomics Institute in La Jolla.

FORBES: Regions

Symyx got its start in 1994, the brainchild of Peter Schultz, a chemist who several years earlier at the University of California, Berkeley hit on the idea of applying the techniques of rapid drug-screening to materials science.

FORBES: Upstart Symyx is shaking up the stodgy chemicals industry.