Evonetix welcomes Andrew Diston as new CEO
Evonetix has a new CEO at the helm as the company seeks to commercialise its semiconductor-based gene assembly technology.
Andrew Diston arrives from Science Group, where he was chief science and technology officer and provided consultancy and systems to an international client base.
He replaces Colin McCracken, who was in the post from June 2022 to December 2023, and is now vice president at Thermo Fisher Scientific.
Andrew arrives at a key time for the Cambridge-based company, which raised £20million at the start of 2023 but underwent a reorganisation at the start of the year, which led to job losses. That was put down to the needs of its technology development.
Evonetix’s technology span out of Cambridge Consultants, where Andrew was previously global head of its medical technology business.
Dr Matthew Hayes, founder and CTO at Evonetix, said: “Andrew’s extensive experience in leading inter-disciplinary teams of engineers and scientists will be invaluable in building Evonetix’s future.
“Under Andrew’s leadership, we will continue to develop our novel gene assembly technologies, optimising our semiconductor chip and binary assembly process to address the gene synthesis bottleneck.”
Andrew has served on the board of directors of MassMEDIC, the Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Device Industry Council, is a member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and is a chartered engineer. He holds an MA in electrical sciences from the University of Cambridge.
He said: “Evonetix’s benchtop gene synthesis platform will revolutionise engineering biology, enabling scientists to tackle the world’s most pressing challenges across healthcare, agriculture, manufacturing, and sustainability. I look forward to working with the team at Evonetix to continue the development of its groundbreaking semiconductor technology.”