About the Editors

Like the other Nature titles, Nature Biotechnology has no external editorial board. Instead, all editorial decisions are made by a dedicated team of professional editors with relevant research and editorial backgrounds.

Chief Editor: Barbara Cheifet, PhD, Springer Nature, US

Barbara completed her PhD in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale University, where she studied the roles of adipocytes in skin wound healing and stem cell development in mice. She spent 7 years at Genome Biology, including 4 years as Chief Editor, before joining Nature Biotechnology at the beginning of 2022 and becoming Chief Editor at the end of that year. She also acts on the MAQC Society Board.
barbara.cheifet@us.nature.com

 

Deputy Editor: Kathy Aschheim, PhD, Springer Nature, US

Kathy did her graduate work in the department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University in the laboratory of Thomas Steitz, where she studied DNA and RNA polymerase complexes by X-ray crystallography. She also worked in the laboratory of Steven Smith on structural studies of membrane proteins using solid-state NMR. Before that, Kathy received a PhD in literature from Yale and taught at Northwestern University. She joined the journal in 2001.
k.aschheim@us.nature.com

 

Senior Editor: Michael Francisco, Springer Nature, US

Michael obtained bachelor's degrees in biotechnology and art history from Rutgers University, with concentrations in industrial microbiology and ancient Greek sculpture. He joined Nature Biotechnology in 1996 and is currently responsible for the journal's Patents and Careers sections. He also manages its social media accounts.
m.francisco@us.nature.com

 

Senior News Editor: Lisa Melton, PhD, Springer Nature, UK

Lisa obtained her PhD at the University of Buenos Aires and did her postdoctoral work at the National Institutes for Medical Research in London, where she investigated thymic differentiation. She then took a science writer's position at the Wellcome Trust and later the Novartis Foundation, contributing to Nature, Scientific American, New Scientist and the Times among others. She joined Nature Biotechnology in 2008.
l.melton@nature.com

 

Senior Editor: Anne Dörr, PhD, Springer Nature, Germany

Anne obtained her PhD at the National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science in Amsterdam on modelling of gene expression. She then did a one-year postdoc at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam on measuring and modeling phenotypic variability and was a researcher for 5 years at Delft University of Technology on topics related to building a bottom-up minimal cell, both experimentally and computationally.
anne.doerr@nature.com

Senior Editor: Anahita Bishop, PhD, Springer Nature, UK

Anahita completed her PhD at the Max Perutz Labs in Vienna, where she studied chromosome dynamics during the first meiotic division. She then joined BMC Biology for a short locum position, after which she moved to Genome Biology in 2018. There, she handled manuscripts from different areas of genomics, before joining Nature Biotechnology in 2023.
anahita.bishop@nature.com

Associate Editor: Alexandra Despang, PhD, Springer Nature, Germany

Alex obtained her PhD in 2021 from the Free University and the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin where she studied the influence of the 3D genome structure on developmental gene regulation. In her postdoctoral studies at the Berlin Institute of Health, Charité Berlin, she continued to work on the generation of genetic models of disease by the development of high-throughput genome engineering to elucidate pathomechanisms of rare developmental disorders.
alexandra.despang@nature.com

Associate Editor: Rong Li, PhD, Springer Nature, UK

Rong obtained her PhD from Peking Union Medical College, China. She then moved to the University of Oxford and did a 5-year postdoc at MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, where she investigated the interaction between hematopoietic cells and stromal cells underlying the progression of myelofibrosis using single-cell multi-omics. She also studied immuno-oncology mechanisms in myeloid proliferation neoplasms to identify potential neoantigens for immunotherapy development. Rong joined Nature Biotechnology in 2023.
rong.li@nature.com

Associate Editor, Reviews: Iris Marchal, PhD, Springer Nature, Germany

Iris obtained her PhD in 2023 from the Humboldt University and the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine - Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology (MDC-BIMSB) in Berlin, where she genetically identified and characterized factors that safeguard cell identities, aiming to improve cell fate reprogramming strategies. She joined Nature Biotechnology in 2024.
iris.marchal@nature.com

Locum Associate Editor: Cláudia Vilhena, PhD, Springer Nature, Germany

Cláudia obtained her PhD in Microbiology from the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, where she studied pyruvate-sensing two-component systems in Escherichia coli. She then did a four-year postdoc at the Leibniz Institute for Natural Products Research and Infection Biology in Jena, where she investigated surface-exposed proteins from Streptococcus pneumoniae using super-resolution microscopy and she also looked into extracellular vesicle formation. Cláudia joined Nature Biotechnology in 2024.
claudia.vilhena@nature.com

Editorial advisors: John Hodgson, Mark Kessel, Mark Ratner, Chris Scott

The Research Cross-Journal Editorial Team supports the Nature-branded research journals, with a focus on handling primary research manuscripts. 

The Reviews Cross-Journal Editorial Team handles Research Briefing articles for the Nature-branded research journals.