Adam Winnifrith
| Adam Winnifrith | |
| Occupation | CEO and co-founder of Evolvere BioSciences |
|---|---|
| Known for | Co-founding Evolvere BioSciences |
| Education | MBioChem, University of Oxford |
Adam Winnifrith is a British biochemist and entrepreneur who is the CEO and co-founder of Evolvere BioSciences, a biotechnology company developing next-generation antibiotics designed to outpace bacterial evolution. The company participated in Y Combinator's Summer 2024 batch.[1]
Early life and education
Winnifrith studied biochemistry at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he earned an MBioChem degree. While a third-year undergraduate in 2021, he co-founded Evolvere BioSciences alongside fellow Oxford students, including co-founder Weronika Slesak, who was studying biology at Worcester College.[2]
Career
Evolvere BioSciences was founded after its team won the Oxford University Society Biohackathon in 2021. The prize included a three-month membership at the BioEscalator, an Oxford-based bioscience incubator, which provided laboratory and business support. The team used this period to obtain initial proof-of-concept results.[2]
The company focuses on the growing problem of antibiotic resistance, which directly causes an estimated 1.3 million deaths per year globally. Evolvere's approach uses co-evolutionary protein-protein interaction datasets combined with artificial intelligence to forecast bacterial mutations and develop antibiotics intended to remain effective against future resistant strains. The company describes its therapeutics as designed to precisely target pathogenic bacteria without harming beneficial microbes or human cells.[1]
Winnifrith has described the founding team as consisting of biochemists and evolutionary biologists who met at the University of Oxford. His areas of specialisation include bioengineering, protein AI, and automation.
In April 2023, the Evolvere BioSciences team contributed to a technical blog post published by Amazon Web Services describing how the company performs macromolecule design on the AWS cloud platform.
Evolvere BioSciences was accepted into Y Combinator's Summer 2024 batch, where the company operates in the sectors of AI-powered drug discovery, biotech, and therapeutics.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "Evolvere BioSciences". 'Y Combinator}'. Retrieved 2026-03-18.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Corpus student co-founds prize-winning biosciences company". 'Corpus Christi College, Oxford}'. Retrieved 2026-03-18.