Company's home is where his hearth is.

• Position: BioStratum Inc.

Most times, a new CEO packs his bags and moves to corporate headquarters. But Archie Prestayko is bringing headquarters to him.

It helps that his biotech company, BioStratum Inc., only has five employees, and most of its research will be conducted at universities. It's the second virtual company he's run, and he's brought both to the Triangle. In 1993, he moved Medco Research Inc. to RTP from Los Angeles. He cites the usual reasons - quality of life and the pool of pharmaceutical workers.

Prestayko, 55, left Medco in 1995 after a spat with shareholders over his plan to acquire Repligen, a much-bigger Massachusetts company. The deal fell through, and he refuses to talk about it.

In November, BioStratum, based outside Chicago, announced he'd signed on as chairman, president and CEO. Prestayko works out of temporary space in Durham, near his Cary home. The rest of the company will relocate once he finds permanent digs in RTP, which he expects to happen by the end of May. One reason he picked BioStratum was a desire to get small. "I've learned that you can do a lot of what big companies do in a small company for a lot less," he says.

Though his name is Ukrainian, his family has lived in Canada for generations. He grew up on a grain farm in Manitoba and went to Colorado College on a hockey scholarship. He got a doctorate in...