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.
David Vauzour
Dr David VAUZOUR received his PhD from the University of Montpellier (France) in 2004. His research, based at the University of Reading (2005-2011), and at the Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia, UK (2011- present), has focused on investigating the molecular mechanisms that underlie the accumulating body of epidemiological, and medical evidence, on a positive correlation between the consumption of diets rich in fruits and vegetables and a decreased risk of (neuro)degenerative disorders. In this context, his initial work provided considerable insights into the potential for natural products to promote human vascular function, decrease (neuro)inflammation, enhance memory, learning and neuro-cognitive performances and to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. His recent interests concern how phytochemicals modulate ApoE genotype-induced cardiovascular risk and neurodegenerative disorders and their underlying mechanisms. Dr Vauzour sits on the board committee of “Groupe Polyphenols” and is the Co-Chair of the ILSI Europe “Nutrition and Mental Performance Task Force“.
Jyrki Ahveninen
Dr. Jyrki Ahveninen is Associate Professor of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology. His work focuses on neuroimaging of human auditory system, auditory working memory and higher-order auditory cognition using techniques including fMRI, MEG/EEG and TMS/EEG.
Zijing Zhou
Dr. Zijing Zhou is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University.
Her primary research focus is on COPD, Asthma and allergic disorders, Lung cancer, Infectious, Rare and Idiopathic Pulmonary Diseases. She has more than 2 years basic research training in Dr Yong Zhou’s Lab (http://scholars.uab.edu/display/yzhou), Pulmonary, Allergy, & Critical Care Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA.
Dr. Zhou's research projects focus on mechanotransduction in lung fibrosis and endothelial dysfunction in COPD.
Teri Balser
Professor Teri Balser is Dean of Teaching and Learning for the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Curtin University, where she came after having been Dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Florida. She received a Ph.D. in soil microbiology came from the University of California at Berkeley, and she completed postdoctoral research in ecosystem ecology at Stanford University. She is a Fellow of the Soil Science Society of America, and was recently named to the Australian Research Council College of Experts.
Her research centers on understanding microbial community-level ecophysiological responses to stress, disturbance, and change, and the consequences of these for ecosystem functioning. She has worked in countries worldwide studying restoration, carbon sequestration, invasive species, biodiversity, and land use/land cover.
In addition to international recognition as an accomplished research scholar, Dr. Balser is widely known in higher education as a change agent and leader in Science, Technology Engineering and Math education (STEM). She is a co-founder of the Society for Advancement of Biology Education Research (SABER), a National Vision and Change Fellow with the Partnership for Undergraduate Life Sciences Education (PULSE), and was a Fulbright-Nehru Distinguished Chair to India in 2015 to help build capacity at the national level for pedagogically advanced and responsive STEM education.
Elizabeth G King
Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences, University of Missouri. The goal of our research is to explain the diversity of life history strategies among organisms. We primarily, though not exclusively, use insect model systems for our research.
Kalliope K Papadopoulou
Kalliope K. Papadopoulou is a Professor in Plant Biotechnology at the Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology, Laboratory of Plant and Environmental Biotechnology, University of Thessaly. She has a first degree in Biology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and a PhD in Plant Molecular Biology from the Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Agricultural University of Athens.
Her main research interests are in plant-microbe interactions, with emphasis on: the molecular basis of symbiotic interactions of plants with soil microorganisms, including multi-partite interactions, and their effect on plant responses to abiotic and biotic stresses; She also has long term experience in plant specialized metabolis (biosynthesis, production in heterologous systems, metabolic engineering in plant systems), focusing lately on the functional roles of plant natural products in beneficial rhizosphere interactions.
Jianjun Zhang
Professor at the School of Land Science and Technology, China University of Geosciences (Beijing).
I work on land use and sustainability, ecological modeling, land economics and regional planning, low-carbon land use and ecosystem services in human disturbance zones, urban management. The focus of my current research has been expanded to green infrastructures, ecologic economics and heat island effects related with land use.
Tiziano Balzano
Postdoctoral researcher at the Comprehensive Neuroscience Centre HM CINAC in Madrid, a specialized centre working on Parkinson’s disease. My research is mainly focused on studying the contribution of Neuroinflammation and Blood brain barrier integrity in Parkinson's disease.
I am author of one patent, 5 book chapters, one edited book and over 30 publications in peer-reviewed journals.
Sònia Garcia
My research is mainly directed towards understanding processes involved in plant genome evolution and organisation, from the sequence to the whole genome. Three areas are highlighted: the study of the evolution of genome size; the structure, organisation and function of ribosomal RNA genes (rDNA) and telomere repeats, and the role of polyploidy and transposable elements (TE) in genome evolution. I have advanced these fields by: (1) the discovery of a novel arrangement of rDNA, first in several Asteraceae and later extended to gymnosperms, (2) the discovery of new telomere sequences in several organisms and (3) the launch and updating of four genomic databases, one compiling Asteraceae genome sizes; the next, on the number and distribution of rDNA sites in plant chromosomes; the following on the distribution of B chromosomes across biodiversity, and the most recent one on plant sex chromosomes. I am the PI of a project on the role of ribosomal DNA in evolution, including the analyses of the repeatome. I was recently involved in a project to examine the role of TE in the evolution of non-model plants and I also participate in a project on the origin and varieties of Cannabis. Beyond this, last year I started an initiative in my Institute to stress the role of women in science, by a series of conferences explaining the biographies and discoveries of relevant scientists in the fields of botany, genetics and genomics, both to the specialised and general public.
Lee Chuen Ng
Dr. Lee Cheung Ng is an Associate Professor within the School of Food Science and Technology at Universiti Malaysia Terengganu. She obtained her Ph.D in Plant Pathology from Universiti Putra Malaya in 2012 and her M.Sc in Bio-industry from Universiti Putra Malaysia in 2004. Dr. Ng's research interests include Plant Pathology and Agriculture Microbiology.
Alvaro Montenegro
Alvaro Montenegro is from Brazil but has lived in North America since 1999. Alvaro's formal training is in Physical Oceanography and he obtained his MS from the University of São Paulo (Brazil) and his PhD from Florida State University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Victoria (BC, Canada) where he started to change his focus from oceanography to climatology. After a period as assistant professor at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish (NS, Canada) he arrived at Ohio State University in 2012. Alvaro's current research interests encompass various aspects of climate change and climate variability, particularly physical and biogeochemical processes occurring at the global and continental spatial scales. Alvaro looks into these problems using mainly climate models but also employ observations. He has used models to address questions on a broad range of subjects from paleoclimate to climate policy, with a concentration on carbon cycle modeling. He is also interested in using paleoclimatic data to constrain archaeological and biogeographic theories.
Jurgen Engelberth
Dr. Jurgen Engelberth has a Ph.D. in plant physiology from the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. After working at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology and at USDA, ARS, CMAVE in Gainesville, FL, he joined the biology faculty at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). He is currently an Associate Professor for plant biochemistry. He is an Associate Editor for Plant Signaling and Behavior and Plants. His work is focussed on plant-plant interactions by volatiles signals in response to biotic and abiotic stresses.