Tobi Ajenifuja

Advanced Laboratory Automation Specialist

 
Tobi is a member of the laboratory automation team, focused on establishing high-throughput genomics and cellular workflows.

I am an experienced laboratory automation scientist who is passionate about providing wet-lab scientists with the tools they need to produce scientific output at scale. Much of the data we generate here at the Institute wouldn’t be possible at this scale without the efforts of myself and my team. My particular expertise revolves around method development on the Hamilton STAR platforms, utilising their proprietary Venus software and underlying HSL code to create liquid handling scripts. Alongside this, I’ve developed operational scripts on Agilent, Tecan and SPT Labtech platforms using their respective software.

During my time at the Sanger Institute, I’ve been a key contributor in establishing cornerstone pipelines, most notably: Respiratory Virus and Microbiome Initiative (RVI) and 007C. The liquid handling scripts I developed for the RVI project has processed over 10,000 samples to date. The data generated from this has been instrumental in surveilling pathogens across the UK, making that genomic data widely available for the scientific community. I’m currently working on automating cell culture for the Multiplex Assays of Variant Effects (MAVE) programme, which aims to understand the functional consequences of human genetic variants at scale. Alongside this, I am working with the Trynka Group from our Human Genetics Faculty to automate TGlow, a scalable high-content imaging platform optimized for systematic single-cell phenotyping of primary human lymphocytes

I am a firm believer in open, collaborative and data-driven science. I have a keen interest in Data Analytics, with future ambitions to further integrate analytics into our team’s practices. In 2025, I completed a Data Analytics Career Accelerator with the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) achieving a distinction. This armed me with the toolsets required to fuel that ambition, bolstering my knowledge to include valuable scripting languages like Python and SQL.

As automation scientists, we sit in a unique position that often gives us oversight of entire pipelines end-to-end. An individual who understands the science, can write the script to run the liquid handler, integrate it with LIMS, extract the raw data, clean it with Python, and visualize the assay results in Tableau is incredibly rare. My long-term ambition is to pioneer a new hybrid role known as the “Full-Stack” Lab Automation Engineer who is capable of understanding, creating and translating each aspect of the modern day lab-based workflow.

 

Get in touch: ta16@sanger.ac.uk

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