# Maria Chatzou Dunford

> Maria Chatzou Dunford is the Greek co-founder and CEO of Lifebit. A computer scientist and former researcher at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, she contributed to Nextflow and helped build Innovation Forum Barcelona before founding Lifebit with Pablo Prieto Barja in 2017. Her public interviews explore fundraising, product usability, leadership and secure collaboration across distributed data.

- **Role:** CEO and co-founder at Lifebit
- **Organizations:** Lifebit, Innovation Forum Barcelona, Centre for Genomic Regulation, Endeavor
- **Nationality:** Greek
- **Education:** BSc in Computer Science and Biomedical Informatics, University of Thessaly, MSc in Bioinformatics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, MSc study in Bioinformatics / Machine Learning, Stockholm University, MBA, Hellenic Open University, PhD in Biomedicine, Pompeu Fabra University
- **Known for:** Equal-contributing author of the 2017 Nextflow paper in Nature Biotechnology., Co-founded Lifebit in 2017., Helped found and led Innovation Forum Barcelona.

## Career timeline

- **2008** — Completed undergraduate study at the University of Thessaly.
- **2010-2011** — Worked as a bioinformatics engineer.
- **2014** — Participated in founding the Innovation Forum network.
- **2015** — Presented Nextflow at ISC Cloud & Big Data.
- **2016** — Completed her doctorate at Pompeu Fabra University.
- **2016-2017** — Postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Genomic Regulation.
- **2017** — Co-founded Lifebit with Pablo Prieto Barja and entered Techstars London; co-authored the Nextflow paper.
- **2018** — Lifebit announced a $3 million seed round.
- **2021** — Lifebit announced a $60 million Series B led by Tiger Global.
- **2022** — Selected as an Endeavor Entrepreneur.
- **2023** — Joined Endeavor Greece’s Greeking Out panel in London.

## Achievements

- Equal-contributing author of the 2017 Nextflow paper in Nature Biotechnology.
- Co-founded Lifebit in 2017.
- Helped found and led Innovation Forum Barcelona.
- Raised Lifebit’s early seed funding following an intensive investor meeting process.
- Selected for Endeavor’s entrepreneur network in 2022.

## Latest updates

- **2026-05** — Quoted as Lifebit CEO in the announcement of Security Tower, intended to centralise security visibility and enforce controls across research environments.
- **2025-11** — Discussed her entrepreneurial beginnings and data governance in a Women’s Tabloid interview.

## Links

- Website: https://lifebit.ai/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-maria-chatzou/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/mariachatzou

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/maria-chatzou-dunford
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-25