Zhana Kuncheva PhD

Dr Zhana Kuncheva is Director of Health Data Sciences at BioXcelerate. Zhana received a degree in Mathematics, Operational Research, Statistics and Economics from the University of Warwick with a Master specialization in probability theory and time series analysis (2012), and a PhD in Statistics from Imperial College London (2017) with a focus on complex network analysis. 

Zhana spent four years at C4X Discovery – a small molecule development biotech – as a Genetics Data Science Lead where she was running the R&D development of the proprietary software Taxonomy3 for genetic data analysis and population stratification. She was responsible for the project development of all neurodegenerative projects with particular focus on Parkinson’s disease. 

Dr Kuncheva has also spent close to two years at Silence Therapeutics – a silencing RNA technology company – as a Senior Scientist in Translational Genomics where she was leading the integration of genetic evidence into the target identification and validation processes via causal inference tools. Zhana joined Optima in May 2022 and has since established a small team of highly qualified scientists in early phase drug discovery. Beyond causal inference tools, Zhana holds interest for unsupervised machine learning approaches for ranking and clustering.

She, in collaboration with Chris, now leads the BioXcelerate team, dedicated to delivering health data science solutions to our clients. Her expertise plays a crucial role in ensuring the successful execution of this organization.