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.

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Timothy M Collins

Full Professor and former Chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at Florida International University. Director of FIU DNA Core facility. Past Program Director for NSF Division of Environmental Biology, Systematics and Biodiversity Cluster.

Research interests include: Molecular Systematics, Evolution, Biogeography, and Phylogeography: Rates, patterns, and mechanisms of molecular evolution , including nucleotide sequence evolution and mitochondrial gene order change, and consequences for phylogenetic reconstruction and reconstruction of ancestral states. Integration of molecular data with paleontological and morphological data. Using phylogenies to address biological questions.

Nikolay A Poyarkov

I am a herpetologist working on diverse aspects of taxonomy, phylogeny and biodiversity of Asian herpetofauna. I have graduated from the Department of Vertebrate Zoology of Lomonosov Moscow State University and finished my PhD on taxonomy and evolution of Asian salamanders (Hynobiidae) in 2010. Presently I am working in this department as an associate professor. My study is focused on a set of topics on evolutionary biology and taxonomy of Asian amphibians and reptiles, including molecular systematics, phylogeography, DNA-barcoding, distribution and taxonomy of certain groups of Asian herps.

Richard M Cowling

Professor of Plant Palaeoscience. Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) and founding member of the Academy of Sciences of South Africa. Former President of the International Society of Mediterranean Ecologists and former Editor-in-Chief of Conservation Letters.

Teresa M Seccia

Associate Professor in Internal Medicine, Dept. Medicine, University of Padova, Italy.
International PhD Degree in 'Arterial Hypertension and Vascular Biology'.

Field of interest: Clinical and translational research in high blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases.

Liang Wang

Prof. Wang is currently a principal investigator at Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital (Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences), Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China, where he leads a theoretical and experimental microbiology (TEM) research group. He is also an adjunct research fellow at the School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, University of Queensland (2023-2026), adjunct research fellow at the Division of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Western Australia (2023-2026), and associate professor (Nov. 2022-Oct. 2025) at the School of Medical and Health Sciences at Edith Cowan University, Perth, WA, Australia. Prof. Wang is supervisor for MSc students at South China University of Technology (SCUT) and South Medical University (SMU), and also supervises PhD students at the University of Queensland (UQ), Brisbane, Australia.

His current research interests are Microbial Physiology and Metabolism, Microbial Informatics and Glycogen-related Human Diseases. He was awarded Doctor of Philosophy Degree from the University of Western Australia in 2014 and received his postdoctoral training at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada) and Curtin University (Perth, Australia). Prof. Wang serves as an associate editor at Frontiers in Microbiology, and editorial board member at Frontiers in Microbiology (Associate Editor), BMC Microbiology, BMC Bioinformatics, Heliyon (Advisory Member), PLOS One (Academic Editor), Immunity, Inflammation and Disease (Emerging Editor), Translational Metabolic Syndrome Research, Future Integrative Medicine, Frontiers in Bioinformatics, iMeta, and Medicine Advances, etc. He also serves as guest editors for BioCell, JoVE, and IntechOpen. Prof. Wang serves as reviewer for more than 10 international journals such as iScience, Journal of Global Health and Communications Biology, etc.

Prof. Wang has edited four books and published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers in international journals such as Emerging Infectious Diseases, Journal of Advanced Research, and Carbohydrate Polymers, etc. He is the recipient of the Australia-China Helicobacter Research Fellowship (2019) awarded by Australia-China Council and Nobel Prize Laureate Professor Barry Marshall.

Siouxsie Wiles

Dr Siouxsie Wiles MNZM studied medical microbiology at the University of Edinburgh, followed by a PhD in microbiology at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Oxford and Edinburgh Napier University. She is currently an associate professor at the University of Auckland. There she heads up the Bioluminescent Superbugs Lab where she and her team make nasty bacteria glow in the dark to find new antibiotics and to better understand how bacteria become more infectious. Siouxsie has won numerous awards for both her science and her science communication. In 2017 she published her first book, ‘Antibiotic resistance: the end of modern medicine?’ and in 2019 was appointed a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to microbiology and science communication. When the pandemic arrived, Siouxsie joined forces with Spinoff cartoonist Toby Morris to make the science of COVID-19 clear and understandable. Their award-winning graphics have been translated into multiple languages and adapted by various governments and organisations around the world. Siouxsie was the Supreme Winner of the Stuff Westpac 2020 Women of Influence Award, named by the BBC as one of their 100 influential women of 2020, and in 2021 was named Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year.

Ugo Bastolla

I got my PhD in Physics at Rome University, working with Luca Peliti and Giorgio Parisi on biologically inspired problems: evolutionary models and Boolean networks. Since then, I have always been interested in computational biology: Protein folding, Stability and population biology constraints in protein evolution, Conformation changes in proteins, Structural evolution of proteins, Theoretical ecology, Ecological interactions among microorganisms.

Maria Luisa Fernandez-Marcos

Maria Luisa Fernandez-Marcos graduated in Chemical Sciences from the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) in 1976. She obtained her PhD in Chemistry from the University of Santiago de Compostela in 1985, specializing in Soil Science. Between 1979 and 1987 she was a secondary school teacher.

Since 1987 she is a professor at the University of Santiago de Compostela, in the area of Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry, where she has taught Soil Science, Environmental Pollution and related subjects. Her main research lines are: soil chemistry, soil fertility and management, biogeochemical cycles, soil and water pollution, environmental soil science, waste management and recycling, tropical soils, climate change mitigation and adaptation.

She is a member of the Spanish Society of Soil Science, Soil Science Society of America, International Union of Soil Sciences and Ibero-American Society of Environmental Physics and Chemistry.

Mya Breitbart

Professor at the University of South Florida College of Marine Science studying viral and microbial ecology

Jingzhe Wang

Jingzhe Wang received his Ph. D in Cartography and Geographic Information System from Xinjiang University, Urumqi, China, in 2019. He is now working as a research associate at MNR Key Laboratory for Geo-Environmental Monitoring of Great Bay Area, Shenzhen University. His research interests focus on Earth observation and remote sensing, spectral modeling, quantitative estimation of soil properties, digital soil mapping, GIS, spatial analysis, and environmental sustainability. He has published over 60 papers in peer-reviewed international journals in these related research areas and has served as a reviewer for many journals and conferences including Remote Sensing of Environment, Ecological Indicators, Computers and Electronics in Agriculture.

Jincheng Wang

Dr. Jincheng Wang is a research fellow at global center for Biomedical Science and Engineering, Hokkaido University Faculty of Medicine. Dr. Jincheng Wang worked as a hepatologist in Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital for 3 years. He published 29 articles and obtained more than 10 patents (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9345-2388). His research interests are natural products, cancer treatment, radiomics, medical informatics and computational methods in personalized medicine.

Armando Sunny

Dr. Armando Sunny is a Researcher and Professor within the Applied Biological Sciences Research Center, Science Faculty at the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico (UAEM).

He is interested to know how certain features of the landscape affect the genetic diversity and structure of species in anthropized environments, for this he performs analysis of landscape genetics, population genetics, niche modeling, SIG, landscape connectivity and global change analysis, especially in amphibians and reptiles.