Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN) today appointed Bill Bonnar as Senior Vice President of Operations. In this newly created role, Bill is responsible for overseeing Illumina’s global manufacturing and supply chain efforts, and will report to Joel McComb, Senior Vice President and General Manager Life Sciences Business.

Bill joins Illumina from KLA-Tencor, a leading semiconductor equipment provider, where he served in several senior operations management positions. He brings with him a wealth of operations, manufacturing and management experience for some of the most complex equipment in the semiconductor industry. His most recent role was Vice President of Operations for KLA-Tencor’s Reticle and Photomask Inspection, and Ebeam Divisions. Bill’s leadership was instrumental in KLA-Tencor’s efforts to successfully introduce lean manufacturing processes, product design improvements, and scaling the global supply chain operations. Prior to KLA-Tencor Bill was a member of the engineering center at Pacific Press Technology and conceived, designed, and implemented an automatic die-deflection compensation system.

Bill began his career at Procter and Gamble as a production manager and controls engineer. Bill earned his Masters of Business Administration from Santa Clara University and a Bachelors of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from California Polytechnic University.

“Bill brings more than 20 years of advanced manufacturing, engineering, and supply chain experience,” said Joel McComb. “His success in the semiconductor industry will be directly applied to our efforts to scale and automate our global manufacturing and supply chain operations.”

About Mr. Bonnar’s Compensation

The Company granted an option to purchase 200,000 shares of Illumina’s common stock to Mr. Bonnar as part of his inducement to join the company. The option was granted by the Company’s Compensation Committee pursuant to NASDAQ Marketplace Rule 4350(i)(1)(A)(iv) and under Illumina’s New Hire Stock and Incentive Plan, which was approved by Illumina’s Board of Directors on January 29, 2008. This option has the following terms: an exercise price equal to the closing fair market value of Illumina’s common stock on the grant date, a ten-year term, and vesting over four years with 25 percent of the option vesting one year from the grant date and 1/48th of the option vesting monthly thereafter. The grant date for this option is January 5, 2009.