Durham Company Builds Staff to Commercialize On-Farm Diagnostic Tests

Advanced Animal Diagnostics (AAD), a developer of technologies for the rapid diagnosis of farm animal diseases, has hired eight employees to round out the firm's research, development and administrative capabilities in the wake of an $11 million Series B round of equity financing announced in March. "We have assembled a team with deep expertise ideally suited to develop our platform of highly accurate, rapid animal diagnostic tests for the farm," said Joy Parr Drach, president and CEO of AAD. "Finding the right people is key, and our recent funding allowed us to create jobs and assemble the right team." All eight new employees are local to the Raleigh-Durham area. The team is focused on commercialization of the company's first on-farm diagnostic test to improve milk production and quality by early detection of mastitis, an infection of the milk-producing gland. Future products will monitor disease states, reproductive, nutritional and overall health status of production animals. David Calderwood has been named vice president of engineering and manufacturing. He was most recently vice president of engineering and product development at McKesson Corp./Parata Systems, LLC in Durham, where he grew the engineering team from less than 10 to more than 160 employees. Calderwood developed and launched the industry's leading pharmacy robotic systems. He previously worked on the first color inkjet printer and led the design and commercialization of the first wide-format ink-jet printer technologies at Hewlett Packard Company. Andrew Graham was hired as chief financial officer. He brings experience in both private and publicly-held companies as former chief financial officer and corporate secretary at Trimeris, Inc. and chief accounting officer at Icoria, Inc. and predecessor company Paradigm Genetics. Graham is a certified public accountant who began his career as an auditor at Ernst & Young in Raleigh. Dr. Mitchell Hockett has been named director of external research and technical marketing. He combines practical and academic experience as co-owner and manager of Kingsmill Farm II, a Holstein dairy in Durham with an international reputation. He was formerly assistant professor in the Department of Animal Science at North Carolina State University and has published numerous papers on the impact of mastitis on reproduction. Debbie Asion has been hired as research scientist and lab manager. She has been a consultant to the company working with AAD's technology since 2004 and pioneered milk cell identification using white blood cell differentials. She is a certified medical technologist with extensive experience in cytology and hematology. She was previously a compliance analyst and R&D assistant chemist at Dade Behring and a research associate at Becton Dickinson. Stefano Bresolin brings expertise in software development and machine vision systems as the lead software engineer. He previously held a similar position at Parata Systems where he developed algorithms for drug identification using spectral analysis and machine vision. He also has vast experience in architecture, database, and user interface development. Bresolin was formerly a software engineer at MiCROTEC in Raleigh and Austria, and at Barr-Mullin, Inc. in Raleigh. Toby Heineck has been hired as a software engineer. He was previously a systems engineer at Parata Systems where he designed and implemented PC-level control software for retail pharmacy robots and developed remote diagnostics systems for improving reliability and serviceability of the product fleet. He began his career as a CAD engineer at Innovant, Inc. Chris Moss has joined the company as a research scientist. He worked on AAD's technology earlier in its development and was previously quality assurance coordinator at Merck and Diosynth Biotechnology, associate research scientist at Talecris Biotherapeutics, GlaxoSmithKline Research and Eli Lilly & Company as well as virology/serology technologist in North Carolina's State Laboratory. Shawn Peterson has been hired as executive administrative assistant/office manager. She held a similar position at InnerPulse, Inc. in Durham. Peterson is certified as a Senior Professional in Human Resources. She managed human resources at SEC Associates, Inc. in Morrisville, and filled human resources and marketing functions at Ethicon, Inc. in Raleigh. About Advanced Animal Diagnostics Advanced Animal Diagnostics (AAD) is an innovative company designed to enhance the profitability of livestock production and ensure a safe, abundant supply of animal protein by developing highly accurate, rapid diagnostics to detect and manage disease states, reproductive, nutritional and overall health status of production animals. The firm's first product is a rapid, on-farm diagnostic test for earlier, more accurate detection of mastitis in dairy cows. For more information about Advanced Animal Diagnostics, please visit www.aadiagnostics.com. 08.18.2011