Academic Editors
The following people constitute the Editorial Board of Academic Editors for PeerJ. These active academics are the Editors who seek peer reviewers, evaluate their responses, and make editorial decisions on each submission to the journal. Learn more about becoming an Editor.
Nitin Amdare
Dr. Nitin Amdare is a Staff Scientist in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. His primary research interest is to contribute significantly to identifying and characterizing the specific human auto-antigen peptides of potential clinical relevance recognized by HLA-restricted islet-infiltrating CD8 T cells, which could facilitate the development of antigen-specific strategies that identify those most likely to be therapeutic targets and markers of pathogenic autoimmunity.
Donovan H Parks
Donovan Parks holds a PhD in computer science and has developed a number of bioinformatic programs used by the research community including CheckM, STAMP, and GenGIS. He has expertise in bioinformatics relating to microbial ecology, phylogenetics, and metagenome-assembled genomes. He is currently working as a bioinformatic consultant with the Australian Centre for Ecogenomics where he is working on an initiative to resolve long-standing issues within bacterial and archaeal nomenclature and developing new tools for reconstructing and validating genomes obtained directly from environmental samples.
Matteo Vandoni
Matteo Vandoni is the scientific director of the Laboratory of Adapted Motor Activity of the University of Pavia.
His research topics are: the study of childhood obesity and diabetes exercise - the changes in the autonomic nervous system in pediatric and adult subjects - the study of the implications of physical exercise on health – the study of functional performance in developmental age.
Erik R Seiffert
Erik Seiffert's research is focused on the phylogenetic relationships, adaptations, and historical biogeography of mammals, with an emphasis on the endemic placental mammals of Africa and Arabia. He has a B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley (1995), an M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin (1998), and a Ph.D. from Duke University (2003). He was previously Lecturer in Palaeobiology and Palaeoenvironments at University of Oxford and Curator of Geological Collections at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History (2004-2007), Assistant and Associate Professor of Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University (2007-2016), and is now a Professor of Integrative Anatomical Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (2016-Present). He is also a Research Associate at the Duke Lemur Center's Division of Fossil Primates and in the Department of Mammalogy, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
Mather A Khan
Dr. Mather A Khan is a Senior Scientist at the Institute of Botanik, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany. Before moving to Germany, Dr. Khan worked as a Postdoctoral fellow and then as a Research Scientist at the University of Missouri-Columbia, USA.
Dr. Khan’s research interest is mainly focused on understanding the mechanisms mediating the uptake and accumulation of essential (Iron, Fe; Zinc, Zn) and toxic metals (Cadmium, Cd) in plants. He is using state-of-the-art techniques including cell-specific transcriptomics, functional genomics, and ionomics to understand how plants take up, distribute and accumulate micronutrients and toxic elements within plant tissues, including seeds. During his stay at the University of Missouri, Dr. Khan discovered that leaves seem to sense the Fe status of the whole plant before roots that in contrast to the traditional view of nutrient sensing by plant roots. His research suggests that leaves integrate signals from different tissues and relay the information on the Fe status to roots to trigger, or not, an Fe deficiency response (i.e. increased Fe uptake).
He joined the Institute of Botanik, Heinrich Heine University in January 2021, where his research continues to explore the seed loading mechanism of Fe and Zn and develop strategies to optimize crops for higher protein and nutritional value which are essential for future agriculture production to ensure food security and reduce malnutrition and poverty.
Michael S Rappé
Mike is a tenured Research Professor at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, and is a member of the graduate faculty with the Departments of Oceanography, Microbiology, and the interdisciplinary Marine Biology Graduate Program at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The overarching theme of his research is to understand the impact of microbial genetic diversity on ocean ecology, and interpret this diversity through the lens of bacterial taxonomy and evolution. He investigates the ecology and evolution of marine microorganisms by combining surveys of natural microbial communities, nucleic acid sequence data, and studies with model systems in controlled laboratory settings.
Jian Zhang
Dr. Jian Zhang currently works at the Division of Gastrointestinal Surgery & Gastric Cancer Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University. Jian does research in Genetics/Epigenetics and Cancer Research. He is also the editorial board member of Frontiers in Oncology and Frontiers in Bioinformatics.
David Kennedy
Our lab studies how interrelated organ systems such as heart, kidney and liver regulate cellular damage (particularly inflammation and fibrosis) and repair during the course of chronic ailments such as heart failure, hypertension, diabetes, obesity and chronic kidney disease. We are particularly interested in developing new preventative and therapeutic strategies to help people suffering from these diseases through establishing novel biomarkers and molecular diagnostics to assist risk stratification as well as identifying new drugs and drug targets and enhancing endogenous counter-regulatory mechanisms. Given our community’s ties to and dependence on the Great Lakes as a source of clean water for drinking, recreation, fishing and agriculture, our laboratory also places a special emphasis on discovering new diagnostic, preventative and therapeutic strategies targeting cellular damage caused by environmental stressors that impair our land-water-food nexus.
Nicola Decaro
Professor of Infectious Diseases of Animals and Director of the Post-graduate School of Infectious Diseases at the Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Bari, Italy.
Michael Hallett
I am primarily interested in computational biology and bioinformatic approaches to biomarkers based on multi-variate, multi-modal gene signatures, especially in the context of cancer.
Huashan Shi
Professor Shi Huashan is an Associate Professor at Sichuan University. His expertise is in the molecular biology of tumours and tumour transcriptomics. He is currently engaged in clinical and basic translational research, including tumour microenvironment and novel immunotherapeutic modalities, and research on the mechanisms and medical applications related to tumour cell vaccines.
Gabriela Constantin
Professor of Pathology and Immunology at the University of Verona, Italy. Dr. Constantin has long-standing expertise in vascular inflammation and leukocyte trafficking with particular focus on the central nervous system. She has a M.D. degree and Residency in Neurology from the University of Milan, and Ph.D. degree from the University of Verona. For her neuroimmunology studies she received several national and international awards. She was elected in the AcademiaNet for excellent woman academics.