Cristi Guijarro-Clarke PhD

Dr Cristi Guijarro is a Principal Scientific Engineer at bioXcelerate, with a PhD in Bioinformatics and Animal Genomics. She brings over a decade of experience spanning bioinformatics, software engineering and scientific computing, with a focus on building scalable, production-ready analytical systems for complex genomic and translational research.

Cristi has worked across a wide range of domains, including health informatics, HLA, next- and third-generation sequencing (NGS/TGS), comparative genomics, and biomarker and drug discovery. Her expertise covers the full lifecycle of data-driven methods, from pipeline development and optimisation through to deployment, automation and ongoing improvement within cloud-based environments.

Prior to bioXcelerate, Cristi held senior engineering roles across industry and research organisations, including Lifebit, EMBL-EBI and Broken String Biosciences. She has led the development and optimisation of large-scale bioinformatics workflows, implemented robust DevOps practices using CI/CD, containerisation and infrastructure as code, and supported global teams in delivering high-quality, reproducible scientific software. She has also worked closely with clients, including major pharmaceutical organisations, to align technical delivery with research and business objectives.

At bioXcelerate, Cristi plays a key role in developing knowledge graph and data visualisation capabilities, supporting robust, reproducible workflows that bridge computational methods and biological insight. She is also an active mentor and leader, driving best practices in software engineering and enabling teams to deliver reliable, scalable solutions in complex data environments.