Meet the Mentors

Dr. Davide Gianni is Senior Director of Functional Genomics at AstraZeneca’s BioPharmaceuticals R&D, where he leads a team of scientists advancing new therapeutic opportunities across key disease areas.

He joined AstraZeneca in 2015 from Boehringer Ingelheim, where he led oncology target discovery efforts. Earlier, he completed postdoctoral research at The Scripps Research Institute, investigating the role of reactive oxygen species in diseases including cancer, neurodegeneration, and cardiovascular conditions.

Dr. Gianni has authored over 30 publications and co-edited SLAS Discovery’s first Special Issue on Functional Genomics. He plays a key role in AstraZeneca’s external collaborations, including with the Joint MRC-MTI-AZ Functional Genomics Screening Laboratory, the Joint AZ/CRH Functional Genomics Centre and the MRC funded UK Functional Genomics Initiative.

His work has earned multiple honors, including the Alzheimer’s Association Young Scholar Award, the Boehringer Ingelheim Golden Award, the Discovery Sciences Science Award and the SLAS Discovery Excellence Award.

Dr. Davide Gianni

With over 12 years of experience in drug discovery , I specialize in bridging the gap between automation and drug discovery to accelerate the journey from HitID to Candidate Drug Identification (CDID). My background spans from managing high-throughput screening departments at Enamine to my current role at AstraZeneca, where I direct the integration of automated workflows and AI tools in drug discovery and safety screening. I offer a unique mentorship perspective that combines deep technical expertise in lab automation across various assay platforms, ensuring that laboratory innovation always aligns with the scientific objectives of the campaign.

As a mentor, I am passionate about empowering researchers to master the transition from manual to automated/high-throughput environments. Whether it is implementing new tools for AI and automation, introducing hardware solutions to the lab, or driving cross-functional collaboration between bench scientists and data scientists, my focus is on the practical application of technology to solve biological problems. By sharing insights gained from leading diverse teams and delivering high-quality data packages, I help mentees optimize their research workflows and strategically position their skills within the evolving global pharmaceutical landscape.

Anastasiia Gryniukova, PhD

Safwan Hak is the Chief Technology Officer at Lab Donkey, a laboratory automation software company focused on making automated laboratories more flexible, reliable, and easier to operate. With more than 30 years of experience designing and building complex software systems, Safwan has worked across industries including nuclear power simulation, healthcare, finance, and artificial intelligence.

At Lab Donkey, he leads the development of a hardware-agnostic orchestration platform that connects laboratory instruments, robots, and scientists into resilient automated workflows. His work focuses on solving the real operational challenges laboratories face when moving from manual processes to fully automated environments, including workflow scheduling, multi?vendor instrument integration, and system recovery when automation encounters errors.

Safwan is particularly passionate about helping engineers and scientists understand how laboratory automation systems are designed in the real world and how to build solutions that are resilient, adaptable, and practical for working laboratories.

Areas of Expertise

• Laboratory automation orchestration
• Workflow scheduling and robotic coordination
• Multi?vendor instrument integration
• Automation architecture and system reliability
• Scaling automated laboratory platforms

Mentoring Interests

• Career paths in laboratory automation
• Designing resilient automation systems
• Building software platforms for scientific laboratories
• Practical lessons from real-world automation projects

Professional Background

• Chief Technology Officer, Lab Donkey
• 30+ years building complex software platforms
• Experience across nuclear simulation, healthcare, finance, AI, and other complex environments

Links

• Lab Donkey: https://labdonkey.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/safwanhak

Tuyen Nguyen, M.S.

David is an old-school systems' engineer, enjoying the challenges of meshing the diverse disciplines of science and engineering. Via Master in Physics at Cambridge University and a further Masters in Instrumentation Systems at UCL, David wrapped up his university credentials with a PhD in Medical Physics, creating novel instrumentation to detect breast cancer with non-ionizing radiation. He started into Lab Automation at Applied Biosystems, leading architecture for a new oligo-neuclieotide manufacturing plant. He moved from California to Milan, Italy, to join a drug discovery CRO, Axxam SpA, to create compound storage and management systems for high-throughput screening, then back to the Bay Area, to guide an organization of scientists and engineers at Counsyl (now Myriad) in building a fully-integrated platform aimed at scalable sample preparation for genetic screening. Most recently, he's been building CRISPR-based cell-engineering factories for Synthego.

David Jennions, PhD

Automation enthusiast with experience in biotech, biophysics & pharmacology. Leader of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology at UMG Göttingen (Pharmacology) & Head of Automation @ myriamed GmbH.

Tim Meyer

Magdalena is a seasoned biotechnologist with over two decades of experience in cell biology, assay development, and high-throughput screening. She holds an MSc in Biotechnology and a PhD in Molecular Biology from the Institute of Biochemistry at the University of Wroclaw. Throughout her career, she has worked in diverse environments across Europe, from big pharma to biotech startups and academic core facilities.

Her extensive background includes positions at well-known institutions such as Aventis Pharma in Paris (now part of Sanofi), SienaBiotech in Italy, and AstraZeneca in Sweden. Magdalena also spent nearly seven years at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, managing an academic screening platform, and contributed to establishing the Centre for High Throughput Screening Studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences.

As a high-throughput microscopy enthusiast, her expertise spans cell-based phenotypic screening across various therapeutic areas, including oncology and neurodegenerative disorders. Currently, as the Lead Molecular Biologist at Ardigen, Magdalena has embraced the challenge of transitioning away from the wet lab to focus on working closely with data scientists. In this role, she ensures the delivery of biologically relevant results to clients and manages scientific collaborations to foster effective teamwork and successful project outcomes

Magdalena Otrocka, PhD

Mario Richter, PhD, is a seasoned pharmaceutical scientist and executive currently serving as Senior Director II and Global Head of Regulated Bioanalysis and Biomarker Support at AbbVie, where he leads a team of over 140 employees across more than ten laboratories. With a strong background in drug metabolism, pharmacokinetics, and bioanalysis (DMPK-BA), he holds global responsibility for translational biomarker support across AbbVie’s entire pipeline, including oncology, immunology, neurology, Aesthetics, and Eye Care.

Since joining AbbVie, he has held progressively senior roles, including Director of Translational Science and a rotation in Corporate Strategy focused on Search and Evaluation. Richter’s expertise spans technology scouting for novel analytical platforms and guiding biomarker strategies from early discovery through late-stage development. Based in Heidelberg, Germany, he is a recognized leader in regulated bioanalysis and biomarker implementation in the pharmaceutical industry. His scientific leadership bridges laboratory innovation and corporate strategy, driving critical support for drug development programs worldwide.

Mario Richter, PhD

Brinton Seashore-Ludlow holds a position Senior Researcher at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. She is a team leader at the Department of Oncology-Pathology, a group leader at SciLifeLab and a scientific director at the Chemical Biology Consortium Sweden, a national infrastructure for chemical biology.

Brinton received her PhD from KTH-Royal Institute of Technology in 2012. She then did a Postdoc in the lab of Stuart Schreiber at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Her work there focused on elucidating predictors of drug response in a large-scale cell line profiling dataset. Brinton then moved to the Chemical Biology Consortium Sweden at SciLifeLab, where she worked on high throughput screening methods to measure drug-target engagement. Her team currently works on high-content screening in advanced disease models for biological discovery, drug repurposing and functional precision medicine.

Brinton Seashore-Ludlow, PhD

Jon Wingfield has a business development role at TTP (The Technology Partnership) specializing in laboratory automation and technology development. He has over 30 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, with a career dedicated to advancing automation, robotics, and innovative screening technologies in early drug discovery. He has led the design and implementation of integrated automation workcells that accelerate hit identification and optimisation, working at the interface of science, engineering, and informatics to deliver robust, high throughput workflows.

Jon has been a pioneer in deploying acoustic liquid handling to replace traditional contact dispensing systems, improving assay miniaturisation, precision, and speed in screening operations. He also played a key role in the development of an ultra high throughput mass spectrometry screening platform based on Acoustic Mist Ionization Mass Spectrometry, enabling label free analysis at unprecedented scale in primary screening and beyond.

In 2024, Jon served as President of the Board of Directors of the Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening (SLAS), reflecting his leadership in the global automation community and his commitment to shaping the future of data driven, autonomous laboratories.

Jon Wingfield