Tapoka T. Mkandawire

Bioinformatics | Genomics | Microbiology | Microbiome

Tapoka did her undergraduate degree in Molecular Biology with an industrial placement at the University of Manchester. She was first exposed to the world of spin outs and start ups through this, and completed her industrial placement at Oxford Biomedica. She then went on to complete a Masters and PhD at the University of Cambridge with the Sanger institute.

During her post graduate studies she was introduced to the world of ‘omics and began undertaking big genomic and transcriptomic projects. During her MPhil the focus was microbiome research, and she was once again exposed to the startup process as her supervisor built a microbiome therapeutics company (Microbiotica). During her PhD she expanded her focus to look at host pathogen microbiota interactions, using large genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic data sets to understand infections of three species of whipworms with their respective hosts. Currently she is a Postdoctoral Fellow developing genomics and transcriptomics tools to investigate Cryptosporidium biology and exploring host- parasite- microbiota interactions in Cryptosporidiosis with innovative in vivo and in vitro models.

She is interested in the operational and organisational side of biotech entrepreneurship and enjoys using her knowledge of big data and the biotech landscape to help start ups facilitate their growth from initial ideas into profitable real world implementation helping those it was designed for.