SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.– 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.
“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.
