Trainer biographies

David Armstrong | EMBL-EBI

Hi, I’m David. I received a BSc in biochemistry from the University of Sheffield in 2010. I continued at the University of Sheffield, completing a Ph.D in structural biology in 2014, co-supervised by Prof. Mike Williamson and Prof. C. Neil Hunter FRS, with a focus on using solution NMR for structural determination of proteins in the chlorophyll biosynthesis pathway. I joined Protein Data Bank in Europe (PDBe) in 2015 as a database curator and in 2018 took on the role of outreach and training lead for PDBe. This role involves the coordination of training, outreach and public engagement activities for the PDBe, PDBe-KB and AlphaFold DB resources, as well as contribution towards curation of data for the PDB and EMDB archives.

Timothee Cezard | EMBL-EBI

I’m the project lead of the European Variation Archive that is responsible for archiving and accessioning all non human variants. I have more than 15 years of experience in Bioinformatics and software development.

Oriol Gracia I Carmona | KCL

Oriol obtained his Bachelor´s degree in Biochemistry at the University of Barcelona (Spain) and joined the computational research group of Prof. Modesto Orozco at the Institute for Biomedical Research of Barcelona (IRB). After finishing his Bachelor’s, he completed his Master’s degree in Bioinformatics for the Health Sciences at the University Pompeu Fabra (Spain). For his thesis project he worked in the group of Prof. Victor Guallar at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). After his Master’s degree, he did his PhD studies in the Doctoral Program BioTop and joined the group of Prof. Chris Oostenbrink at the University for Natural resources and life sciences (BOKU). Oriol is currently working on a collaborative project between the group of Prof. Franca Fraternali at University College London (UCL), Prof. Mathias Gautel and Dr. Aleksej Zelezniak at King’s College London (KCL). His research interest focuses on developing computational methods and analysis tools for the study of biological systems.

Paulyna Magaña | EMBL-EBI

I’m the project lead of the European Variation Archive that is responsible for Bioinformatician for the AlphaFold Database at the Protein Data Bank in Europe (PDBe).

Aleena Mushtaq | EMBL-EBI

Aleena studied Molecular and Biomedical Sciences at King’s College London. She joined the Quadram Institute Biosciences, UK to pursue her PhD in the field of Molecular Biology. Her PhD investigated the molecular and microbial changes in the gut-liver axis in response to the high-fibre and low-fibre Western diets. Aleena joined EMBL-EBI as an Ensembl Outreach Officer in 2021 and delivers training on Ensembl resources.

Dona Shaju | EMBL-EBI

Dona Shaju joined the European Genome-phenome Archive (EGA) team at EMBL-EBI in 2019 as a Helpdesk Bioinformatician and later transitioned into the role of an Operations Bioinformatician in 2021. Prior to joining EMBL EBI, she started her career as a Programmer Analyst at Cognizant after completing her Bachelor’s in Bioinformatics from Karunya University, India. Her work focused on computational drug discovery and infectious disease gene predictions using system biology approaches. She later completed her Master’s in Biomedical Genomics from the National University of Ireland. Her master’s project focused on the development of an R Shiny web application for the comparison of machine learning techniques for the prediction of inhibitors of Apaf-1 activity. After completing her Master’s she worked as a Teaching Instructor for the CTYI, Ireland, after which she joined the EGA.

Elena Speretta | EMBL-EBI

Elena Speretta is a senior biocurator in the Protein Function Content team at EMBL-EBI providing manual annotations to UniProtKB database and working on the development and quality assessment of automatic annotation systems. Before joining EMBL-EBI, she worked on several research projects on neurodegenerative diseases.

James Stephenson | EMBL-EBI

I am currently the lead data scientist with UniProt with a special interest in genetic variation. My roles involve sourcing and verifying variant data sets, importing and mapping genomic coordinates to protein sequences and developing tools to understand the potential consequences of altering proteins. I work closely with partners in industry via Open Targets with whom I developed ProtVar, a tool to interpret and contextualise human missense variation. My previous research work, jointly between the EBI and Sanger, involved the analysis of patterns in protein 3D structures of variants from children with developmental disorders where I worked more closely with clinical colleagues. Before working on the genome campus I worked for five years in the US for NASA where my interest in amino acid and protein physico-chemistry led me to work on early life on Earth, in-vitro evolution and investigating Martian clay.

Sameer Valenkar | EMBL-EBI

Background – PhD, Indian Institute of Science, 1997. Postdoctoral researcher, Oxford University, UK, 1997-2000. At EMBL-EBI since 2000. More information on the team – https://www.ebi.ac.uk/about/teams/pdbe/

Timir Weston | KCL

Timir is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at King’s College London, with a focus on the development of bioinformatics tools to aid in the study of giant sarcomeric proteins. Having studied for a BA in Biological Sciences at Somerville College, University of Oxford, he then graduated from Imperial College London with an MSc in Applied Biosciences and Biotechnology before attending King’s College London as part of the NIHR BRC Doctoral Training Programme, being awarded an MRes in Biomedical and Translational Science, and joining Prof Franca Fraternali’s lab as a PhD Student. His PhD thesis was concerned with the study of the giant sarcomeric protein titin and elucidation of its relationship to cardiac and skeletal myopathies using computational and dynamical methods, and developing predictive tools that can be used to identify and characterise novel variants.