Elena Punskaya is an Affiliated Lecturer in the Cambridge University Engineering Department and a member of the Probabilistic Systems Information and Inference group. A Fellow and Director of Studies in Engineering at Christ’s since 2008, she supervises and mentors students across the engineering disciplines.
With a background in applied mechanics, she received both her MPhil and PhD in Information Engineering from St John's College Cambridge, later holding research and fellowship posts at the Department of Engineering and Homerton College, where she was the College's first Engineering Fellow and Director of Studies in Engineering, establishing its first cohort of engineering students.
Alongside her academic work, Elena’s has co-founded technology ventures, including Cronto, where she led the company and its technology from inception to millions of users. Following Cronto's acquisition by VASCO/OneSpan, she established and led the company’s Innovation Centre in Cambridge. She has also led statistical research teams in technology ventures, including the life sciences spin-out BlueGnome, acquired by Illumina. She also mentors students through King’s Entrepreneurship Lab, helping them to develop innovative ideas into viable ventures.
