Timofei Zatsepin

Biography

Timofei is a strong scholar and entrepreneur with a solid background in oligonucleotide and siRNA chemistry. He received the Candidate of Science degree in Bioorganic Chemistry from M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU) in 2003. After a year of research assistantship at the Laboratory of Chemistry of Nucleic Acids, MSU Department of Chemistry, Timofei was promoted to the Lab’s Research Associate. In year of 2004 Timofei became the Head of the oligonucleotide production unit at the Central Research Institute of Epidemiology (CRIE), Moscow, where he still maintains the position and is in charge of provision of synthetic oligonucleotides for a range of diagnostic and sequencing applications. Since 2012 Timofei is a Senior Research Associate at the MSU Laboratory of Chemistry of Nucleic Acids. He is also a cofounder of DNA-Synthesis – a company that provides oligonucleotide based services like synthesis of primers, probes and genes. Timofei is a recipient of the Academia Europea Prize for the synthesis and evaluation of 2′-modified oligonucleotides, as well as awards and prizes from International Soros Science Educational Program, MSU and the Government of Russia among others. His publication record features such respected scientific journals in the field of organic chemistry as Nucleic Acids Research, RNA and PLoS One. Timofei is also an enthusiastic teacher with more than ten years of experience in preparing and reading lectures on biochemistry and molecular biology. Timofei first joined Skoltech in 2013 as Associate Director of the Center for Functional Genomics, where he has established a high-class laboratory for oligonucleotide synthesis. In this capacity, he oversaw most of the Center’s scientific activities and plays the key role in Skoltech collaborations with a number of institutions, including MIT, Max Planck Institute in Dresden and MSU.

Research Interest

Translational Biomedicine