Dr. Ingrida Olendraitė

Dr Ingrida Olendraite is a chief scientific officer at the multi-omics data analysis company VUGENE. The company has strong background in integrating and interpreting large, complex datasets from a variety of biological datasets: transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, genomics and epigenomics and tackles a wide range of biological questions by the help of internationally experienced bioinformaticians and cutting-edge computational solutions. For Dr Olendraite, the academic career started in Vilnius while studying Molecular Biology at Vilnius University and working at prof. Saulius Klimasauskas group at the Institute of Biotechnology. Later, she moved to London to study Genetics of Human Disease at University College London, where she switched to computational biology while working on a Deep Learning model at prof Nicholas Luscombe group. Finally, Ingrida has earned he PhD in Computational Molecular Virology, while discovering thousands of RNA viruses at prof. Andrew Firth group at University of Cambridge, where she stayed for a couple of years doing her postdoctoral research.  

Additionally to her research, Dr Olendraite is active in public communication and is commonly an invited speaker for conferences: from research to business. Together with colleagues (lead by Dr. Migle Tomkuviene) she published a book “Code: RNA” for Lithuanian general public and is actively engaged with local media: giving talks to the national broadcaster, radios, podcasts, etc. During COVID-10 pandemic, Ingrida was part of the Prime Minister’s advisory council where she utilised the space to initiate the national genomic surveillance for SARS-CoV-2. Building communities and mentoring is also a big part of her activities, she was the leader and co-founder of the extraordinarily successful Vilnius iGEM team and is bringing the global RNA virus discovery community (RdRp Summit) for the advancement of the field.