Team

Our team combines deep technology and therapeutics expertise with strong operational and commercial experience.

Dr. Debora Lucarelli, Chief Executive Officer

Debora has a wealth of experience in technology development and a strong track record of successfully delivering large-scale projects in academia and industry. Previously, she led a cancer signature discovery program at Cambridge Epigenetix, directed laboratory research in large population studies (Head of laboratory, MRC Epidemiology, University of Cambridge) and worked on the development of the Oxford Nanopore’s technology. At Enhanc3D Genomics Debora is driving development of the technical platforms, establishing partnerships across the pharma and biotech industry and advocating the advent of a 3D genomics era.

Peter Bream, Chief Financial Officer

Peter has over 30 years of experience in international business ranging from start-ups to blue-chip companies. He has previously been CFO of public companies listed on the LSE and NASDAQ, in a range of industries including pharmaceuticals, medical diagnostics, engineering and chemicals with market capitalisations ranging from $10 million to $2 billion. Peter is currently a Non-Executive Director and Chair of the audit committee for an AIM listed healthcare business.

Dr. Nic Walker, Chief Technology Officer

Nic has 20 years of experience extracting and developing tools for insight from complex datasets in biotech, research institutes, and start-ups. His domain expertise crosses epigenomics, molecular technology development, cancer diagnostics, software engineering and machine learning. Prior to joining Enhanc3D Genomics Nic conducted research at the University of Cambridge in Epigenomics and was the Director of Data Science at Cambridge Epigenetix Ltd.

Dr. Stefan Schoenfelder, Chief Scientific Officer

Stefan is a recognised expert in the area of 3D genome organisation and function. Having led the development of Capture Hi-C while working in Prof. Fraser’s laboratory, Stefan is a group leader in the Epigenetics Programme at the Babraham Institute. He co-founded Enhanc3D in 2020 and continues to serve as CSO.

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Dr. Lyubomira Chakalova, Senior Scientist

Lyubomira has over 20 years of experience in cutting-edge methodology development in molecular and cellular biology. Before joining Enhanc3D, Lyubomira worked in the Fraser group at Babraham for 10 years and previously led her own independent research group. At Enhanc3D Lyubomira is focused on maximising the value of the Company’s technology.

Dr. Michiel Thiecke, Senior Bioinformatician

Michiel holds a Masters and PhD in Bioinformatics from the University of Cambridge. During his PhD, he studied the role of architectural chromatin proteins in gene control in Mikhail Spivakov’s lab at the Babraham Institute. Afterwards, Michiel joined Enhanc3D, leading the development of the bioinformatics pipeline and the analysis and interpretation of our in-house data. This has resulted in three publications in addition to yielding initial candidate targets for therapy.

Anne Rone, HR Manager

Ann is a senior HR professional with over 20 years’ experience ranging from FTSE 100 companies to start-ups and has experience in the biotech, manufacturing, chemical, technology and retail sectors.

Alex Scott-Simons, Head of Bioinformatics Engineering

After initially training in Chemistry, Alex held a range of hands-on and management positions across data science and data engineering. He has built commercially successful data science products from scratch and gained global experience at high-profile companies (including Facebook, Lazada, and WPP) in consumer and advertising technology before returning to science and joining Enhanc3D.

Dr. Helen Bignell, Principal Scientist

Helen is highly experienced in technology development within the field of genomics, successfully taking innovative ideas to commercialised products. She holds a Master’s and a PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology. Previously Helen worked at Cambridge Epigenetix developing epigenetic tools to identify methylation in DNA. Prior to this Helen spent 10 years at Solexa/Illumina as a major contributor working on many aspects of the early NGS (Next Generation Sequencing) technology.

Dr. Mohamood Adhil, Senior Data Scientist

Adhil has extensive experience in extracting meaningful information from large biological and clinical datasets. He has a Master’s degree in Life Sciences Informatics and completed his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Marco Foiani, studying DNA supercoil role in genome organisation. Prior to joining Enhanc3D, Adhil was a product manager and data scientist at InterpretOmics, where he was responsible for the development of omics-based clinical software and knowledge bases tailored to enhance precision medicine.

Dr. Lira Mamanova, Lead Scientist

Lira is a highly experienced scientist with proven scientific, administrative and service experience with a strong interest in new technologies, and how to best apply them. Lira had previously worked at the Wellcome Sanger Institute for 14 years, developing and optimising various Next Generation Sequencing (NGS)-based technologies, including a high-throughput Single-cell transcriptomics and genomics pipelines. Lira led a team in a fast-paced and innovative environment. Prior to this she has worked at Imperial College London. She holds a Master’s and a PhD in Genetics from Moscow State University.

Dr. Ben Watkinson-Powell, Data Scientist

Ben is a mathematical modeller with a range of experience and expertise across bioinformatics, biostatistics, and theoretical biology. Having originally trained as an evolutionary ecologist, Ben completed a PhD in mathematical epidemiology at the University of Cambridge before moving into statistical genomics while working at Congenica prior to joining Enhanc3D. A common thread throughout Ben’s work has been the development of models that aim to achieve a balance between practical simplicity and the necessary reflection of biological complexity.

Patrizia Messina, Scientist

Patrizia has a master’s degree in Biological Science and a post degree specialisation in Human Nutrition. Originally from Italy, she moved to Cambridge to join the MRC Epidemiology Unit, where she worked for 7 years at the MRC Epidemiology Unit. She has 20 years of experience, both in research and clinical laboratories, covering a wide range of methodologies but with a particular focus on establishing and validating large-scale human sample measurement pipelines with robotic assistance.

Lisa Karpuk, Office Manager/PA

Lisa has over 10 years experience as an Office Manager. She has a strong track record of building great relations with key stakeholders and likes to keep the office running smoothly and efficiently. Lisa takes pride in creating a positive and productive work environment which allows her colleagues to succeed

Jo Yarker, Head of Biology

Jo holds a PhD in Molecular Biology and completed her training studying 3D genome organisation and its function in gene regulation. She has since worked within the biotech sector and her professional experience, driven by a keen interest in the identification and validation of disease-modifying targets, spans target discovery, validation, and drug discovery.

Dr. Jenni Westoby, Senior Bioinformatics Engineer

Jenni is a bioinformatician who specialises in developing automated bioinformatics workflows. She holds a bioinformatics PhD in single-cell RNA-seq and alternative splicing from the University of Cambridge. Prior to joining Enhanc3d Genomics, Jenni worked at Inivata developing precision medicine bioinformatics pipelines, and at CS Genetics performing single-cell RNA-seq analyses and automating daily pipeline runs.

Steven Zemke, Vice President of Operations/Chief of Staff

Steven has a wealth of experience in developing, assessing, and managing academic and research programmes. Prior to joining Enhanc3D Genomics, he spent several years at the Sanger Institute focused on strategic initiatives involving their research programmes and overall scientific portfolio. More recently Steven was Chief of Staff at CS Genetics, a Cambridge based start-up focused on single-cell technologies.

Zhen Ren, Finance Manager

Zhen, FCCA professional with over 18 years of experience ranging from start-ups to multinational corporations, and has experience in the food, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, blue-chip companies (ABFI, AstraZeneca, Amgen, EMIS, Volvo, HP, AVEVA etc), coupled with multilingual skills, also CPA and CTA qualified in China. She has a Master’s degree in International Consultancy and Accounting, and a first degree in Law.

Vassili Kusmartsev, Data Scientist

Vassili is a biological data scientist, motivated to combine the growing amount of data with the ever advancing computational methods to reduce suffering. He obtained his PhD at Imperial College London in Evolutionary Genomics with Dr. Tobias Warnecke, where he worked to quantify selective pressures and investigate the mutational burden of cytosine methylation. Prior to joining Enhanc3d Genomics, he worked as a data scientist at Exscientia, finding novel druggable targets by building large biological networks and developing new methods.