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Curriculum Vitae Sven Sewitz

Profile

Founder, Frontier Strategy — Potsdam/Berlin, Germany (2024–present)
Advising life science innovators, founders, and investors on translating complex biology into strategy, partnerships, and measurable outcomes.

Industry Experience

6+ years of Leadership Experience in Life Science SaaS Solutions
Innovation Strategy for Digital Health & Life Sciences
Project Management for Life Science Software Development
External Stakeholder Management & High Performance Team Building

Research Expertise

16+ years research and innovation in human health:
Structural & Chemical Biology, 3D Genome Organisation, Bioinformatics
10+ years wet lab research experience & 6 years computational genomics
Project Grant Evaluations for the European Research Agency (ERA)

Goals & Motivation

Providing impactful solutions for improved patient health
Delivering increased business value by applying my skills and expertise gained in over 20 years at world class institutions and cutting edge scale ups to develop the next generation of health solutions

Professional Experience

Director of Biodata Innovation, Eagle Genomics — Cambridge, UK & Germany (2018–2023)
Led innovation strategy for a biotech data company, building client-facing solutions for pharma, biotech, and consumer health.

  • Advanced to Director after roles as Solutions Architect and Head of Innovation.
  • Worked with global pharma partners on microbiome and genomics projects.
  • Contributed to Series B fundraising and expansion into Europe.

Senior Scientist & Project Lead, Babraham Institute & MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) — Cambridge, UK (2010–2018)

  • Established and ran large-scale genomics projects in chromatin biology and 3D genome architecture.
  • Key contributor to landmark Cell publication (Javierre et al., 2016) on promoter capture Hi-C across 17 human cell types.
  • Managed collaborations with academic and pharma partners, coordinating data pipelines and publications.
  • Supervised MSc and PhD students in wet-lab and computational biology.

Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Cambridge (Dept. of Chemistry) (2006–2010)

  • Worked in the group of Prof. Shankar Balasubramanian (co-inventor of Illumina’s Sequencing by Synthesis).
  • Explored chemical biology approaches to nucleic acid research.

Education

DPhil (PhD), Biochemistry — University of Oxford (2000–2004)

  • Thesis in molecular biology and nucleic acids.
  • Gained extensive experience in genomics and laboratory biology.

Postdoctoral Training in Computational Biology — MRC LMB, Cambridge (2009–2010)

  • Self-taught bioinformatics (Perl, R), later trained in computational genomics at LMB.
  • Developed dual expertise across wet-lab and data science.

Awards

Innovation Award
Eagle Genomics named Cambridge Independent AI Company of the Year 2023

Product Design Award
Product vision nominated for London UX/UI Design Award 2023

Scientific Achievements & Awards
Babraham Institute SPOC bridging grant
Royal Society Research Fellow Scientific Seminar
Prime-XS Funding (EU FP7) for Proteomics
AAAS Awarded Membership, program ‘Excellence in Science’
Jesus College, Cambridge, College Research Associate

Oxford University Graduate Studentship

Selected Publications

  • Javierre, B.M., Sewitz, S., Fraser, P., et al. (2016). Lineage-Specific Genome Architecture Links Enhancers and Non-coding Disease Variants to Target Gene Promoters. Cell 167(5): 1369–1384.

3D Genome Organisation

S. Sewitz, Z. Fahmi, K. Lipkow, Higher order assembly: Folding the Chromosome. Curr. Opin. Struct. Biol. 42 (2017)

S. Sewitz et al., Heterogeneous chromatin mobility derived from chromatin states is a determinant of genome organisation in S. cerevisiae. bioRxiv (2017)
S. Sewitz, K. Lipkow, in Systems Biology Approaches for Understanding Genome Architecture, in Chromosome Architecture, M. C. Leake, Ed. (Springer New York, 2016), Methods in Molecular Biology, pp. 109–126
B. M. Javierre... S. Sewitz et al., Lineage-Specific Genome Architecture Links Enhancers and Non-coding Disease Variants to Target Gene Promoters. Cell. 167, 1369–1384 (2016)

Chemical Biology of Cancer

M. Bejugam... S. Sewitz et al., Targeting the c-Kit Promoter G-quadruplexes with 6-Substituted Indenoisoquinolines. ACS Med. Chem. Lett. (2010)
Z. A. E. Waller, S. Sewitz, S.-T. D. Hsu, S. Balasubramanian, A small molecule that disrupts G- quadruplex DNA structure and enhances gene expression. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 131, 12628–12633 (2009)
H. Fernando... S. Sewitz et al., Genome-wide analysis of a G-quadruplex-specific single-chain antibody that regulates gene expression. Nucleic Acids Res. 37, 6716–6722 (2009)
M. Bejugam... S. Sewitz et al., Trisubstituted isoalloxazines as a new class of G-quadruplex binding ligands: small molecule regulation of c-kit oncogene expression. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 129, 12926–12927 (2007)

Bacterial Transposition

D. Liu, S. Sewitz, P. Crellin, R. Chalmers, Functional coupling between the two active sites during Tn 10 transposition buffers the mutation of sequences critical for DNA hairpin processing. Mol. Microbiol. 62, 1522–1533 (2006)
P. Crellin, S. Sewitz, R. Chalmers, DNA looping and catalysis; the IHF-folded arm of Tn10 promotes conformational changes and hairpin resolution. Mol. Cell. 13, 537–547 (2004)
S. Sewitz, P. Crellin, R. Chalmers, The positive and negative regulation of Tn10 transposition by IHF is mediated by structurally asymmetric transposon arms. Nucleic Acids Res. 31, 5868–5876 (2003)
R. Chalmers, S. Sewitz, K. Lipkow, P. Crellin, Complete nucleotide sequence of Tn10. J. Bacteriol. 182, 2970–2972 (2000)

DNA looping

Skills & Expertise

  • Molecular Biology: Chromatin, epigenetics, genome architecture.
  • Computational Biology: Bioinformatics, genomics, large-scale data analysis.
  • Strategy & Innovation: Translating biology into commercial outcomes, partnerships, and grant strategy.
  • Leadership: Supervision of students, client-facing roles, directing innovation projects.

Languages

  • English — Native
  • German — Fluent