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.
Paula Baptista
Paula Baptista is currently Auxiliary Professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança (IPB), coordinator of the topic "Sustainable Agriculture and Innovative Agro-food Chains" of the “Mountain Research Center” and the convenor of the International Organisation for Biological Control (IOBC), working group ‘Integrated protection of olive crops”. Her main interests are focused on plant-microbe-insect interactions, biological control, plant microbiome and microbial biocontrol agents.
Zhaohui S. Qin
Dr. Qin is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics at Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University. He is also a faculty member at the Department of Biomedical Informatics, Emory University School of Medicine. Dr. Qin received his B.S. degree in Probability and Statistics from Peking University in 1994 and Ph.D. degree in Statistics from University of Michigan in 2000. He was a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Jun Liu’s group in Department of Statistics at Harvard University from 2000 to 2003. He joined the Department of Biostatistics at University of Michigan in 2003. In 2010, he moved to his current position in Emory University. Dr. Qin has more than 15 years of experience in statistical modeling and statistical computing with applications in statistical genetics and genomics. Recently, his research is focused on developing Bayesian model-based methods to analyze data generated from applications of next generation sequencing technologies such as ChIP-seq, RNA-seq and resequencing. Dr. Qin also actively collaborates with biomedical scientists and clinicians on various projects that utilizing next generation sequencing technologies to study cancer genomics. Dr. Qin has published more than 100 peer-reviewed research papers covering statistics, bioinformatics, statistical genetics and computational biology. He has supervised more than 10 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.
Susana Agusti
Dr. Susana Agusti is Professor of Marine Science at KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) at the Red Sea Research Center, and Adjunct Professor at the University of Tromsø (Norway).
She holds Bachelors and Ph.D. degrees from the Autonomous University of Madrid.
Formerly she was Research Professor with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), and Professorial Fellow with the UWA Oceans Institute and the School of Plant Biology at the University of Western Australia (Australia).
Joanna L Elson
My work considers mtDNA disease through the prism of evolution, applying a number of techniques to develop methods to identify pathogenic mtDNA mutations. I also work on the role of mtDNA population variation in common disease, inclusive of projects centred round a single disease and method development. Others papers centre on fundamentals of mitochondrial genetics including inheritance and the selective forces that have shaped mtDNA variation in modern human populations.
Ziarih Hawi
Dr Ziarih Hawi is a Senior Research Fellow in Psychiatric Genetics at the Institute of Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience. Dr Hawi has been investigating genetic predisposition to psychiatric disorders with particular emphasis on the genetic of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). He has successfully identified risk gens for ADHD, narrowed down regions of associations and has functionally characterised some of the ADHD-associated genes.
Patrick Bergeron
Patrick Bergeron is an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Bishop's University
His research centers around questions about the ecology, physiology and evolution of vertebrates. Under this large umbrella, work is separated into three main projects, on
Chipmunks, Humans and Wood frogs.
Clara Stefen
PhD in Biology in Bonn, Postdoc in Berkeley, Museum of Paleontology. Currently Curator of Senckenberg Naturhistorische Sammlungen Dresden.
Xosé Anxelu G. Morán
Research Professor at the Oceanographic Center of Gijón/Xixón (IEO, CSIC), Spain. I was Associate Professor of Marine Science, Red Sea Research Center, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia, from 2014 to 2020 (currently adjunct). I joined the IEO in 2001 after my PhD training at the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM, CSIC) in Barcelona. I am a biological oceanographer and microbial ecologist addressing the role of microbial plankton in biogeochemical carbon cycling from different perspectives. My research interests include the trophic relationships between phytoplankton and heterotrophic prokaryotes, the long-term dynamics of planktonic microorganisms and their response to global change, with particular emphasis on warming using the metabolic ecology framework. I combine experimental approaches with large-scale observations, both spatial and temporal, in order to predict the future direction and extent of change in the structure and functioning of marine microbial food webs.
Emanuel Tschopp
Emanuel Tschopp received his MSc in paleontology 2008 at University of Zurich, Switzerland, and his PhD in 2010 at Faculdade de Ciência e Tecnologia of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal, under the supervision of Prof. Octávio Mateus. After postdocs in Portugal, Italy, and the USA, he is now a Humboldt Fellow at University of Hamburg. His main research interests are the dinosaur and lizard systematics and phylogeny with a focus on sauropod dinosaurs from the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation in the USA, and extant and extinct lacertid lizards. Furthermore, he is an actively working on improving the methodology of phylogenetic analysis based on phenotypic data, and developing approaches to quantify intraspecific variability to use in species delimitation.
Christine Josenhans
Christine Josenhans is Professor for Microbiology and Medical Microbiology at Max von Pettenkofer Institute of Ludwig Maximilians University Munich and an infectious disease specialist. Until 2017, she was Associate Professor at Hannover Medical School, Germany, also in the field of infection research and molecular and cellular microbiology. Her research foci are on infectious disease agents in general, with specialization in microbiology, biochemistry, immunology, and host-pathogen interactions. She performed her Post-doctoral studies on Yersinia host-pathogen interactions, more specifically on their type III secretion system pore proteins. Current research foci are in persistent bacterial and viral infections, host-pathogen crosstalk and immune interference, as well as in the causal link between infections and cancer.
She is on the board of several undergraduate and graduate teaching programs.
Timothy Omara
Dr. Timothy Omara is a researcher with the Institute of Chemistry of Renewable Resources, BOKU University, Austria. He is also an Assistant Lecturer of Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry, College of Natural Sciences, Makerere University, Uganda.
He was previously with the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, School of Sciences and Aerospace Studies, Moi University, Kenya, and affiliated with the Centre of Excellence II in Phytochemicals, Textile and Renewable Energy (PTRE) hosted at the same University.
Dr. Omara holds research assiduity and proven track record of publications and refereeing across international peer-reviewed journals, with research interests including-but not limited to- food toxicology, analytical, natural products and environmental chemistry employing advanced analytical techniques.
He has published over 80 peer-reviewed articles and 5 book chapters as of August 2025, and currently serves as an Academic Editor in PeerJ Life & Environment, PLoS ONE, PeerJ Analytical Chemistry, Journal of Food Quality (Wiley), Natural Product Communications (SAGE) and VEGETOS (Springer)
Katharine L Stuble
Plant Biologist at The Holden Arboretum. Research focuses on the ecological impacts of global climate change and species invasions.
Our lab researches the basic mechanisms underlying the maintenance of diversity within communities, as well as how global change may alter these communities and the services they provide. We focus on two main drivers of global change: climatic warming and species invasions with a particular focus on how global change is altering interspecific interactions ranging from competition to mutualisms.