Dr. Andrew Defries PhD is a botanical chemist with training in human physiology,
pharmacology, genetics/genomics, and plant physiology. Andrew completed his graduate degree in Plant Chemical Genetics from agricultural focused University of California Riverside in 2013.
Seeking post doctoral work with cannabis Andrew began his career in an analytical testing lab Sonoma Lab works where he did a lot of Quality Control for Absolute Extracts and Care By Design (Santa Rosa, CA). Shortly thereafter, in 2016, he was integral for the debut state licensed Medical Marijuana provider Bloomfield Industries in New York which was aquired later by MedMen. At Bloomfield Andrew utilized his botanical expertise to launch the cannabis population and completed the build of both the CO2 extraction and analytical laboratories.
Andrew has experience overseeing quality and analytical testing from cultivation to extraction at a production scale. More recently Andrew was the Director of Quality and Analytics for the launch of the national cannabis brand Tikun Olam USA now known as Tikun. In addition to this experience Dr. Defries has been a consultant for several startups with large scale CO2 Cannabidiol (CBD) extraction and refinement projects across the US.
Through his work he has observed several regional opportunities for cannabis and hemp especially in the North East. Andrew founded 710 Vermont LLC in 2019 and purchased arable land in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont to grow hemp to be processed and formulated into consumer products.
