Twist Bioscience Appoints Mike Fero, Ph.D., as Chief Information Officer

Twist Bioscience Corporation (NASDAQ: TWST), a company enabling customers to succeed through its offering of high-quality synthetic DNA using its silicon platform, today announced the appointment of Mike Fero, Ph.D., as chief information officer. Dr. Fero brings more than 30 years of experience leading startups, developing commercial software, researching biology and physics and working in fast-paced deep-tech businesses.

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Mike Fero, Ph.D., CIO of Twist Bioscience (Photo: Business Wire)

“Mike’s extensive background in building and configuring scalable enterprise software platforms, paired with a deep understanding of systems biology and artificial intelligence and importantly, his experience as a Twist customer, uniquely positions him to understand and drive our mission to enable our customers to improve health and sustainability by delivering DNA at scale,” said Emily M. Leproust, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Twist Bioscience. “I am confident his leadership will play a pivotal role in reinforcing Twist’s technology infrastructure and accelerating product execution efficiency to support our growing product portfolio and expanding customer base.”

“My technical expertise along with my extensive hands-on experience as a salesman, marketer and lab worker as well as a customer of Twist, gives me a comprehensive understanding of the evolving needs of our customers and employees,” commented Dr. Fero. “Since joining Twist as a consultant in March, I’ve gained valuable insights into our internal workflows and how to optimize our systems to best serve our customers, allowing us to scale significantly by leveraging technology. As I step into this new position, I am excited to continue partnering with our talented Twist teams and am committed to increasing system efficiency, reliability and consistently elevating the experiences of all stakeholders.”

Before joining Twist, Dr. Fero co-founded and served as CEO of TeselaGen Biotechnology for a decade, where he spearheaded TeselaGen’s enterprise software platform, providing a comprehensive suite of tools for DNA design, assembly, management and experimental workflows to a range of biotech customers from startups to Fortune 50 companies. Prior to TeselaGen, he was a principal investigator and NIH Career Fellow at Stanford University where he explored the signaling pathways that govern the bacteria cell cycle through the development of an automated epifluorescence microscopy platform including both hardware and software for high-throughput, high-content genetic screens and subsequent data analysis. He also served as director of Stanford Functional Genomics, where he collaborated on the development of the first human and murine genome scale microarrays. Prior to Stanford, Dr. Fero served as vice president of software engineering at Neomorphic where he guided development of a laboratory information management system (LIMS) solution for the human genome project at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Before Neomorphic, he held a variety of escalating positions at HyperParallel and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Fero holds a Ph.D. in Physics and a B. A. in both Math and Physics, both from the University of California, Irvine. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge and conducted international studies in Maths at Trinity College, Dublin. Dr. Fero serves as an advisor to both government and private groups exploring the promise, limits and concerns around the field of synthetic biology.

About Twist Bioscience Corporation

Twist Bioscience is a leading and rapidly growing synthetic biology and genomics company that has developed a disruptive DNA synthesis platform to industrialize the engineering of biology. The core of the platform is a proprietary technology that pioneers a new method of manufacturing synthetic DNA by “writing” DNA on a silicon chip. Twist is leveraging its unique technology to manufacture a broad range of synthetic DNA-based products, including synthetic genes, tools for next-generation sequencing (NGS) preparation, and antibody libraries for drug discovery and development. Twist is also pursuing longer-term opportunities in digital data storage in DNA and biologics drug discovery. Twist makes products for use across many industries including healthcare, industrial chemicals, agriculture and academic research.

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Twist Bioscience Legal Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical facts contained herein are forward-looking statements reflecting the current beliefs and expectations of management made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other important factors that may cause Twist Bioscience’s actual results, performance, or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, among others, the ability to achieve the expected benefits of Twist Bioscience’s restructuring activities and reduced investments in DNA data storage; the ability to attract new customers and retain and grow sales from existing customers; the ability of Twist Bioscience to achieve sufficient revenue to achieve or maintain positive cash flow from operations or profitability in any given period will depend heavily on the success of our existing products and the development and commercialization of additional products in the synthetic biology, biologic drug and data storage industries; risks and uncertainties of rapidly changing technologies and extensive competition in synthetic biology that could make the products Twist Bioscience is developing obsolete or non-competitive; uncertainties of the retention of significant customers; the ability of Twist Bioscience to successfully integrate acquired companies and to achieve expected benefits from acquisitions; supply chain and other disruptions; risks of third party claims alleging infringement of patents and proprietary rights or seeking to invalidate Twist Bioscience’s patents or proprietary rights; and the risk that Twist Bioscience’s proprietary rights may be insufficient to protect its technologies. For a description of the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those expressed in these forward-looking statements, as well as risks relating to Twist Bioscience’s business in general, see Twist Bioscience’s risk factors set forth in Twist Bioscience’s Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on November 21, 2023 and subsequent filings with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements contained in this press release speak only as of the date hereof, and Twist Bioscience specifically disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

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