I studied Biomedical Engineering and got a PhD in Systems Biology which allows to me operate at the intersection of intersection of biology and medicine as viewed through the lens of data science. During my PhD I investigated how drug resistance emerges during chemotherapy and discovered that cancer cells can adapt to the presence of drug by acquiring a reversible resistant behaviour in response to the treatment. Before joining the CZ Biohub I was a postdoctoral fellow at King’s College London, where I explored the mechanisms of cellular differentiation in the skin. Now as a member to Data Science Platform at CZ Biohub I lead the computational effort of building the first mouse aging cell atlas. I am passionate about innovation and technology and want to use computational tools to advance fundamental knowledge of cell behaviour in health and disease to improve healthcare and wellbeing.

Dr. Olga Botvinnik is a bioinformatics scientist at Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, a non-profit biomedical research institute. She is a genomics expert interested in a “grand unified theory of cells,” by applying computer science and machine learning algorithms to biological data, especially interested in sequencing weird creatures such as ticks. She holds two S.B. degrees, one in Mathematics and one in Biological Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She also holdsa M.S. in Bioinformatics and Biomolecular Engineering from UC Santa Cruz, and she completed her education with a PhD in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology from UC San Diego. She is a NumFOCUS John Hunter Technical Fellowship and NDSEG Fellowship recipient, and Hertz Fellowship Finalist. She runs a weekly Twitch livestreaming channel called “Bioinformatics Beyonce” that showcases real bioinformatics work such as genome assembly, open-source software and cloud computing, and interviews with scientists about their research and day-to-day work. Open science, open data, open source.

Norma Neff carried out graduate work in Biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley in the laboratory of Dr. Michael Chamberlin and focused on the mechanism of termination of transcription by E. coli RNA polymerase.  During this work she became interested in testing mutants in the subunits and took the Cold Spring Harbor summer course in Bacterial Genetics.  One of the instructors was David Botstein and she became a Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellow in his laboratory at MIT working on yeast molecular genetics.  Using chicken tubulin genes she cloned the first yeast tubulin genes and with Jim Thomas and Jim Haber demonstrated that homologous recombination could knockout genes and introduce new sequences in yeast cells.

Joining the Molecular Biology Program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering her lab isolated the first yeast gene to have 2 distinct enzymatic activities created from a protein splicing event, creating an extein and an intein.  At the New York Blood Center she joined Dr. James German and Dr. Nathan Ellis to characterize the activities of the Bloom Syndrome DNA Helicase and demonstrate its nuclear location in PML bodies and the nucleolus.  Moving to Stanford she joined Dr. Richard Myers ENCODE program and began making and sequencing ChIP-seq libraries on the Illumina GA platform.

After joining Stephen Quake’s laboratory at Stanford she established a sequencing program for the Stem Cell Institute and successfully sequenced a wide variety of libraries on a number of Illumina platforms as well as 454, Helicos, Ion Torrent, PacBio and Oxford Nanopore.  As the Director of the Genomics Platform at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub she manages sequencing services, continues to work on single cell RNAseq, single molecule sequencing, and participates in the development of diagnostics as well as the Cell Atlas single cell projects.

I received BS in Biomolecular Engineering from UC Santa Cruz. I’ve since then joined a liquid biopsy company and worked as a lab associate in a clinical/CLIA laboratory for short stint before joining the technology development group as a research associate. There, I worked on possible methods for early cancer detection and reoccurrence monitoring on cell free DNA using NGS. At CZ Biohub, I am part of the Genomics group, working with different groups to answer their sequencing questions as well as keeping up with their sequencing needs. My other projects include working with collaborating groups in understanding their non-model species, such as Ticks and Botryllus.

I got my BA at UC Berkeley where I studied molecular cell biology with an emphasis in developmental biology. Shortly after graduation, I joined the Quake Lab working on microfluidics and next-generation sequencing. I went off to industry for many years working with cell free DNA and RNA for transplant, cancer and infectious disease diagnosis. At CZ Biohub, I'm part of the Genomics team, working with everyones sequencing and library needs. On the side I'm working on single cell RNA-sequencing on ISRIB treated mice. I strive to understand aging and disease to help improve care and patient lives.