Advisory Board and Editors Genomics
Brett E Pickett
Dr. Brett Pickett is an Assistant Professor in the Microbiology and Molecular Biology Department at Brigham Young University. He completed his B.S degree in Microbiology from BYU in 2005, his Ph.D. training in Microbiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and his postdoctoral training in Pathology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. He then obtained additional experience in industry, and at the J. Craig Venter Institute, where he led investigative studies in viral comparative genomics and the human transcriptional response during viral infection. His research develops data mining methods, applies machine learning techniques, and use advanced statistical workflows to better understand how human cells respond during infection.
Douglas Pires
Douglas Pires is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Health in the School of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne. Previously, he was a group leader and researcher in public health at Oswaldo Cruz Foundation/Brazil. He was also a postdoctoral researcher fellow at the University of Cambridge and University of Melbourne. He received a PhD in Bioinformatics from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais/Brazil and a BSc in Computer Science, both with highest honours, by the same university. His research interests include: Computational Biology, Translational Bioinformtaics and Machine Learning.
Xavier Pochon
Team Leader, Molecular Surveillance, Biosecurity Group, Cawthron Institute, New Zealand.
Associate Professor, Institute of Marine Science, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
My research at the Cawthron Institute is highly applied and consist of developing multi-trophic molecular tools for environmental monitoring of marine industries (e.g. aquaculture farms, marine biosecurity in ports and marinas, and deep-sea exploration).
At the University of Auckland, I combine 'real-world' and 'blue-sky' research applications, including; i) investigating functional underpinnings of Symbiodiniaceae in coral reef ecosystems, ii) characterizing microbiomes in aquaculture and natural settings, iii) measuring eDNA and eRNA decay rates in marine invertebrates and vertebrates, iv) studying preferential settlement of marine invasive species associated with marine plastic debris, and v) exploring the diversity and dynamics of open-ocean plankton communities in the Pacific and beyond.
Renato Polimanti
Dr. Renato Polimanti is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine. His scientific interests include Human Genetics, Biological Psychiatry, Computational Biology and Human Evolution.
Toryn Poolman
Dr. Toryn Poolman is a Lecturer in the Department of Structural & Molecular Biology at University College London.
His primary research interests include applying omics techniques, including RNAseq, phospho-proteomics, and microbiome analysis.
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.
Aaron R Quinlan
Aaron Quinlan, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Human Genetics and Biomedical Informatics at the University of Utah. He obtained his bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary and his Ph.D. from Boston College where he focused on population genetics, new methods for emerging DNA sequencing technologies, and the discovery and characterization of genetic variation. He performed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Virginia where he developed expertise in structural variation of mammalian genomes and somatic genome mutation. He started his laboratory at the University of Virginia in 2011 and began his faculty position at the University of Utah in early 2015. Broadly speaking, his research is focused on the development and application of new computational and statistical techniques for understanding the biology of the genome. His team tackles problems with practical importance to understanding genome variation, chromosome evolution and mining genetic variation related to human disease. Understanding the genome is a hard problem: we try to develop new approaches to gain insight into genome evolution in the context of disease.
Rommel T J Ramos
The Rommel Ramos Professor of Bioinformatics of Federal University of Para (Brazil) affiliated member of Brazilian Science Academy and CNPq Researcher (level 1-D). Since 2008 works with genome assembly and RNA-Seq analysis, he is the leader of the bioinformatic development group of the Biologic Engineering Laboratory in Park of Science and Technology (Pará/Brazil).
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.
David A Ray
I am a broadly trained evolutionary biologist. I also taught high school Biology, Chemistry and Physics before returning to graduate school and earning my PhD from Texas Tech University in 2002. After that, I held postdoctoral and assistant professor positions at Louisiana State University, West Virginia University and Mississippi State University before returning to TTU as an associate professor. My research interests are in organismal and genome evolution with an emphasis on the impacts of transposable elements on both.
Timothy D Read
My research centers on genomics of infectious diseases, focusing on bacterial pathogens such as Chlamydia trachomatis, Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus anthracis. I use comparative approaches to understand evolution of traits such as virulence and antibiotic resistance phenotypes and develop countermeasures and diagnostics. I am becoming increasingly interested in investigating interactions of pathogens with the other microbiota within and outside the host. As a microbial geneticist by training I have a long-standing fascination with the movement of genes between bacteria by lateral gene transfer.
Sushma Reddy
Dr. Sushma Reddy is the Breckenridge Chair of Ornithology at the Bell Museum of Natural History and Associate Professor in Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology at the University of Minnesota. Her research investigates biological diversity by using genetic, phenotypic, and geographic data to study the evolutionary history of birds. From adaptive radiations in Madagascar to diversification patterns in the Old World tropics and the early evolution of modern birds, her work spans the breadth of avian phylogenetics. As a natural history museum curator, she oversees the Bell Museum’s collection of bird specimens and is part of a global network of biodiversity repositories, a key resource for understanding environmental change. She collaborates with scientists across the world and trains students at all levels. Her research continues to build our knowledge of bird diversity and aid conservation efforts.