AIT Labs exec succeeding founder Evans as CEO

Indianapolis-based AIT Laboratories announced that Ron Thieme is succeeding company founder Michael Evans as president and CEO.

Thieme had been serving as vice president and chief information officer of AIT since 2007.

The company also announced that AIT’s director of information services solutions, William Cox, has been promoted to vice president and chief administrative officer, and its director of laboratory operations, Jason Bush, has been promoted to vice president of operations. In addition, Andrea Terrell will serve as vice president and chief scientific officer.

“I am excited about the transition in leadership at the company that I founded 22 years ago to this day. As chairman of the board I hope to continue the success of AIT Laboratories and focus on the future growth of the company,” Evans said in a statement.

AIT Laboratories, a forensics and clinical testing company, had said in January that it was looking to "restructure our business" and had eliminated an unspecified number of jobs.

“AIT remains a vigorous life sciences company,” Evans said in the statement at the time.

The job cuts were a turnabout from 2010, when AIT said it planned to create as many as 160 jobs by 2014 and invest $74 million to equip a 90,000-square-foot building at Woodland Corporate Park as a new headquarters and lab. The Indiana Economic Development Corp. offered AIT up to $1.8 million in performance-based tax credits to help with the expansion.

Employment at AIT grew to nearly 500 people in recent years, but Evans said in January that conditions were worsening in the health care sector.

“AIT has seen reimbursement from government and private payers reduced throughout 2011, which has had a negative financial impact on the company,” he said in his January statement.