Solomon Shepherd, Phd student

Solomon graduated from Imperial College London with a first-class degree in Medical Biosciences, gaining early research experience in molecular embryology and stem cell biology. He went on to complete an MPhil in Clinical Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge, where he developed high-throughput neuronal models for anti-obesity drug discovery, which were subsequently out-licensed to industry, before joining the British Heart Foundation 1+3 MRes + PhD programme in Cardiovascular Science.

For his PhD in the Sinha Lab, co-supervised by Prof. Sanjay Sinha and Prof. Sarah Teichmann, Solomon is building the Virtual Heart Perturbation Atlas. This project integrates non-destructive single-cell transcriptomics with CRISPR perturbations in iPSC-derived cardiac cells and adult myocardial slices to generate causal datasets for training predictive models of cardiac perturbations His work aims to improve cardiotoxicity screening, accelerate drug discovery, and support precision cardiology.

Outside the lab, Solomon enjoys powerlifting, surfing, and shorting biotech stocks around binary events such as clinical trial readouts, using mechanistic and preclinical evidence to inform positions. As a Gravity BioSpark Fellow and regular participant in biotech entrepreneurship hackathons, he is also deeply engaged in the commercialisation of emerging biotechnologies.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/solomon-shepherd-7b099b1a9