Open Targets brings together a team with expertise from academia and pharma, pulling together skills from a wide range of disciplines including bioinformatics, computer science, web development, human genetics, functional genomics and operations. Our Executive Leadership Team and our Scientific Leadership Team determine the strategic and scientific vision for the consortium and our Strategy and Operations Team provide the necessary support to facilitate the vision and its implementation across our partners.

Our Platform Team and our Genetics Team are responsible for maintaining our informatics resources and tools while our Project Teams conduct experimental and informatics research and our Validation Lab Team takes targets identified from these projects and guides them through further screens to assess suitability for drug discovery programmes.

And our Scientific Advisory Board are a group of well-known individuals from academia and industry that make recommendations to further the sucess of our partnership.


Executive Leadership Team

The Open Targets Executive Leadership Team (ELT) provides strategic direction for the partnership, engages with potential new partners, and oversees the awarding of project grants.

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Ian Dunham

Open Targets Director

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David Hulcoop

Strategy & Operations Director

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Ellen McDonagh

Informatics Science Director

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Gosia Trynka

Experimental Science Director

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Birgit Kerber

Business Development Lead


Scientific Leadership Team

The Open Targets Scientific Leadership Team (SLT) is compromised of representatives from every partner and is responsible for setting the scientific priorities for the consortium and approving experimental and informatics research project proposals.

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Jason Arroyo

Pfizer Scientific Lead

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Shameek Biswas

Bristol Myers Squibb Scientific Lead

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Hayley Francies

GSK Scientific Lead

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Mathew Garnett

Sanger Institute Scientific Lead

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Emily Holzinger

Bristol Myers Squibb Scientific Lead

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Xinli Hu

Pfizer Scientific Lead

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Donald Jackson

Sanofi Scientific Lead

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Shameer Khader

Sanofi Scientific Lead

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Maria Martin

EMBL-EBI Scientific Lead

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Mark McCarthy

Genentech Scientific Lead

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Nikolina Nakic

GSK Scientific Lead

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Evangelia Petsalaki

EMBL-EBI Scientific Lead

Photo of Orit Rozenblatt-Rosen
Orit Rozenblatt-Rosen

Genentech Scientific Lead

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Roser Vento-Tormo

Sanger Institute Scientific Lead


Project Teams

Through our experimental and informatics research programmes, we have funded more that 90 research positions within the institutes that we work with and formed teams that engaged many more scientists across industry and academia to improve target identification and prioritisation.


Strategy and Operations Team

The Strategy and Operations Team manages our project portfolio, oversees scientific operations and communications, and works with the Executive Leadership Team to develop and implement overall strategy. Our Senior Administrator also provides day-to-day support for senior management.

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Sally Bygraves

Research Manager

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Helena Cornu

Communications Lead

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Paris Litterick

Senior Administrator

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Sarah Young

Data Manager


Scientific Advisory Board (SAB)

  • Professor Sir Mike Ferguson

    Regius Professor of Life Sciences

    School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee

  • Caroline Fox

    Vice President, Merck Research Labs (MRL) Head, Genetics and Pharmacogenomics (GpGx)

    Merck Research Laboratories

  • Joanna Holbrook

    Vice President of Bioinformatics

    Cambridge Epigenetix

  • Anshul Kundaje

    Assistant Professor of Genetics and of Computer Science

    Stanford University

  • Mark McCarthy

    Executive Director, Human Genetics and Senior Fellow, Human Genetics

    Genentech

  • Olivia Rossanese

    Interim Director of the Cancer Research UK Cancer Therapeutics Unit and Interim Head of the Division of Cancer Therapeutics

    The Institute of Cancer Research

  • Jay Shendure

    Professor of Genome Sciences

    University of Washington