Dr Mark Ashton

Executive Vice President Business Development Services

Dr Mark Ashton, 40, has been Executive Vice President Business Development Services of Evotec since 2005. Before taking over responsibility for Business Development, Dr Ashton held a number of positions within Operations at Evotec: In 1995 he joined the Company as one of the initial employees of the Discovery Division. He became Department Manager in 2001, Director of Chemistry Services in 2002 and took over responsibility for Evotec's entire Discovery Services in 2004 running Evotec's screening, parallel synthesis and medicinal chemistry operations. During his time at Evotec, Dr Ashton has managed a wide range of pharmaceutical and biotechnology related projects, including medicinal chemistry projects, design and synthesis of screening libraries and technology transfer projects and has been involved in the advancement of a number of compounds to the clinic.

Dr Ashton has authored and co-authored a number of peer reviewed papers and articles in addition to being named on a number of pharmaceutical patents. He is now responsible for all of Evotec's commercial and marketing activities for the Companies' Drug Discovery and Development Services Division.

Dr Ashton is trained as a medicinal chemist and completed a medicinal chemistry post-doctoral at Bath University on the synthesis of spider toxins as Ca+ channel blockers in 1995 following gaining his PhD for the design and synthesis of novel steroidal anesthetics. Prior to joining Evotec Dr Ashton also had spells at ICI Pharmaceuticals and Organon Laboratories.