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 (New York)
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.
Deputy Editor: Kathy Aschheim (San Francisco)
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.
Senior Editor: Laura DeFrancesco (Pasadena)
Laura received her PhD at the University of California, San Diego in cell biology and did postdoctoral work on mitochondrial nucleic acids at California Institute of Technology. After doing research for 10 years at the City of Hope National Cancer Center and the University of California, Los Angeles on various topics in animal and cell science, she became the founding editor of the LabConsumer section of The Scientist. Following that, she was managing editor of the web-based life science portal BioResearch Online, and later went on to write for several publications, including Nature Medicine, Analytical Chemistry and BioIT World. She joined the journal in 2003 and is responsible for Features.
Senior Editor: Michael Francisco (New York)
Michael obtained bachelor's degrees in biotechnology and art history from Rutgers University, with concentrations in industrial microbiology and ancient Greek sculpture. He is responsible for Nature Biotechnology's Patents and Careers sections, and also manages social media for the journal. He joined Nature Biotechnology in 1996.
Senior News Editor: Lisa Melton (London)
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.
Senior Editor: Anne Dörr (Berlin)
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.
Senior Editor: Anahita Bishop (London)
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.
Associate Editor: Alexandra Despang (Berlin)
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.
Associate Editor: Rong Li (London)
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.
Editorial advisors: John Hodgson, Mark Kessel, Mark Ratner, Chris Scott
