Staff profile

Elena is Entrepreneur in Residence Life Sciences at Durham University. She assumed this position after 23 years at P&G where she was a Head of Global Life Sciences Open Innovation, Corporate R&D. Her responsibilities included development of novel Open Innovation Collaboration Models, establishment of strategic collaborations to enable P&G Open Innovation programmes and identification and development of best-in-class solutions and opportunities to address the top P&G needs. She worked successfully across cultures, establishing effective cross-border strategies by developing cross-regional collaborations. Before that she worked in Healthcare where she had a wide range of experiences including GMP audits of non-western suppliers, global product design and professional credentialing.

Elena is recognised as an expert in the life sciences research and innovation and had a series of academic and government appointments in the UK including an impact assessor Biological Sciences at the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, a member of BBSRC Pool of Experts, a member of the steering team of the Physics of Life Network (UK), a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine; appointed a Visiting Professor, Department of Biosciences (Durham University) for second term and publications in peer-reviewed journals.