Advisory Board and Editors Genomics
Jorge MO Fernandes
Professor in Genomics and Molecular Biology. My main research interests are antimicrobial peptides, microRNAs and the epigenetic regulation of myogenic gene networks by environmental factors, such as temperature and photoperiod. ERC grantee with the project EPIFISH: Innovative epigenetic markers for fish domestication. ERC Consolidator Grant, European Research Council (Ref. 683210). Academic editor of PLoS One and Scientific Reports.
Carlos Fernandez-Lozano
Dr. Carlos Fernandez-Lozano is an Associate Professor at the University of A Coruña (UDC). He is a biomedical data scientist with a deep interest in discovering the complex relationships between different biological levels. His research track is multidisciplinary as he is trained in computer science, machine learning, bioinformatics, and biostatistics. His research line is focused on how biological interactions are manifested at the disease level through the use, development, and application of kernel-based computational approaches that integrate different levels of biological data on the microorganism, gene, protein, and medical imaging axis.
Pedro G Ferreira
Pedro G. Ferreira graduated in Systems and Informatics Engineering from the University of Minho in 2002 and obtained his Ph. D. in Artificial Intelligence from the same University in 2007. From 2008 to 2012, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Bioinformatics and Genomics Laboratory, Centre for Genomic Regulation, Barcelona. From 2012 to 2014, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow the Functional Population Genomics and Genetics of Complex Traits group, School of Medicine, University of Geneva. He has been involved in several large international consortia including: ICGC-CLL, ENCODE, GEUVADIS, SYSCOL and GTEx. He published several papers in high impact journals, including the multidisciplinary journals: Nature, Science, Nature Communications, Scientific Reports, PNAS and eLife. Other papers have been published in high impact specialized journals including Genome Biology, Genome Research, American Journal of Human Genetics, Nature Cell Biology, RNA or Leukemia. He is the author of 3 book chapters and 2 books. He has an h-index of 31, with a total > 32 000 citations. In 2015, he was awarded an FCT Investigator Starting grant and he joined Ipatimup/i3s. He was awrded the Research Award 2015 and 2019 from Portuguese Society of Human Genetics - SPGH and the Microsoft Azure Research Award for Data Science 2017. He is a partner in a bioinformatics data analysis company with national and international clients, including hospitals, diagnostic clinics and research centres. From 2015 to 2018, he was an invited assistant professor at the Department of Informatics at the University of Minho, where he taught bioinformatics and data analysis at master's level. He has been involved in the final supervision of 1 postdoctoral fellow, 2 PhD students, 22 Masters students and 3 research assistants, and in the ongoing (main and co-) supervision of 5 PhD students and 5 Masters students. He was the director of the Masters and Specialisation in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (2020-2023). He has experience in the genomics start-up environment, where he developed information systems for personal genomics data interpretation. He is currently an Assistant Professor (since 02/2019) with Habilitation (since 10/2022) at Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto and a Senior Researcher at the Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support Group at INESCTEC. He is currently the Director of the Bachelor in Bioinformatics and Adjunct Director of the Bachelor in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science. His main research focus is on developing methods for a variety of problems in genomic data science. In particular, he is interested in unravelling the role of genomics in human health and disease. To achieve this goal, he applies and develops data analysis models using machine learning and probabilistic methods to analyse and interpret diverse, complex and large-scale genomic datasets.
David E.K. Ferrier
Reader in Biology and Director of the Scottish Oceans Institute, at the University of St Andrews.
The focus of our research is the connection between the content and organisation of genomes to the evolution of development (evo-devo). We utilize a variety of organisms in our research (including amphioxus, sea squirts, polychaetes and priapulids), chosen from key points in the phylogeny of the animals to enable reconstruction of the ancestral conditions at major nodes in the animal kingdom; the origin of bilaterians, protostomes, deuterostomes, chordates and vertebrates.
Daniel Fischer
I studied Statistics and Computer Sciences at the Technical University of Dortmund, Germany. During that time, my interest was particularly in mathematical statistics with a focus on high-dimensional extensions of the univariate median. After graduating, I moved to Tampere, Finland and completed my PhD in at the University of Tampere in Biostatistics with minor Bioinformatics.
While still being enrolled as PhD student at the University I started to work as a researcher in Bioinformatics at the MTT, Jokioinen, Finland. Since 2015 I am working at the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) where I finalized my PhD.
My published articles in peer-reviewed journals cover a wide range of applications as well as statistical theory. My areas of expertise are target gene detection, biomarker identification and novel gene detection with a special focus on long non-coding RNAs. Further, I have experiences in the development of statistical methods for DE testing as well as deriving novel non-parametrical tests for (e)QTL analyses. I published and maintain currently six R-packages, i.e. for (e)QTL testing, cross-species ortholog detection and dimension reduction methods.
Mario Alberto Flores-Valdez
Dr. Mario Alberto Flores-Valdez is a Professor in the Medical and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Unit, CIATEJ, A.C., Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico (2007-present). He is a member of the National System of Researchers (SNI), and a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences. He was a Stanford University Medical Center postdoctoral fellow (2004-2007), where he received a Dean's Fellowship Award (2006) to conduct research on Tuberculosis. He worked in UNAM as Research Assistant for Prof. Jaime Mora (2004) and Prof. Emundo Calva (2003). He has received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from UNAM (1999-2003), a M.Sc. in Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering from UANL (1996-1999) and a B.Sc. from Universidad de Sonora (1991-1996) in Chemistry and Biology. He received fellowships from CONACYT for M.Sc. and Ph.D. studies and in M.Sc. and B.Sc. has received Diplomas as Best Student. He has expertise in Tuberculosis, particularly in developing recombinant BCG strains. He has been PI for 7 grants from 2008 to date, focused in studies about tuberculosis vaccine development and basic aspects of mycobacterial physiology.
Lasse Folkersen
PhD in genetics from Karolinska Institute, Sweden. Research according to an overarching theme of my research is the use of high-throughput omics to bridge the gap between research and medicine. My initial interest was in expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL), and their possibilities for translating genetics to medical use. This followed a further step into actual industrial drug and pharmacogenetics development from the technique, performed at Novo Nordisk, Denmark. Current interests focus on further translation of main genetics results into actual use both in the clinical context of response stratification and in the industrial context of drug development.
Dina M Fonseca
Professor in the department of Entomology at Rutgers University and also a member of the graduate programs in Ecology and Evolution and Microbiology and Biochemistry. I am primarily a molecular ecologist examining how populations of invasive species change upon arrival and expansion and, in the case of disease vectors, how they affect epidemiological landscapes and risk estimates. From 2008-2013 I was the lead PI at Rutgers on a cooperative agreement funded by USDA-ARS to develop and test Area-wide Integrated Mosquito Management strategies to control Aedes albopictus, the Asian tiger mosquito. In July 2017 I became the Director of the Center for Vector Biology, a program that provides accreditation, continuing education and broadly supports the extended NJ Mosquito Control community. I have developed a strong extension program working with professional mosquito control programs using vector biology, ecology and evolution to develop effective and efficient strategies for control. I have also spearheaded urban mosquito control by residents through Citizen Action Through Science (Citizen AcTS): http://vectorbio.rutgers.edu/CitizenAcTS.htm. Founding member of the Worldwide Insecticide resistance Network (WIN): https://win-network.ird.fr/ and founding member of InSITe (Innovative Strategies for Invasives Team) using environmental DNA (eDNA) and risk analysis to detect and contain invasive species https://www.insiteru.org.
M. Pilar Francino
M. P. Francino studied Biology at the National University of Mexico and obtained her Ph.D. at the University of Rochester (New York), working on analyses of rates and patterns of DNA sequence evolution in bacteria and primates. She conducted postdoctoral research in bacterial genetics as an EMBO Fellow at the University of Paris. After that, she served as a Research Scientist at the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI) for five years, and was Head of the JGI Evolutionary Genomics Program from 2007 to 2009. Since 2009, she is a Senior Scientist at the Genomics and Health Department of FISABIO-Public Health in Valencia, and has been Head of the Department since 2012. Her current research focuses on the metagenomic analysis of human microbiome communities, in particular on understanding the development of the gut microbiota in infants. Work in her group analyzes the taxonomic composition, coding capabilities and gene expression patterns of the gut microbial community at different stages during infancy, as well as the relationships of these features with infant health. In addition, she is also interested in understanding the forces that shape the structure, organization and evolution of genomes. In previous and current work, she has addressed genome and molecular evolution subjects at different scales, ranging from the impact of mutational biases during DNA sequence evolution, to the evolution of new genes and their regulatory regions and the coevolution of different genomic traits.
Uta Francke
Uta Francke is Professor of Genetics and Pediatrics, Emeritus, Stanford University School of Medicine. Past President, American Society of Human Genetics; Past President, International Federation of Human Genetics Societies; March of Dimes/Colonel Harland Sanders Lifetime Achievement Award in Genetics. Recipient of the William Allan Award of the American Society of Human Genetics. Senior Medical Director, 23andMe, Inc.
Simon DW Frost
Reader in Pathogen Dynamics at the University of Cambridge; formerly Adjunct Associate Professor in the Dept. of Pathology, University of California San Diego (UCSD). Graduated with a BA in Natural Sciences (1st class), Trinity College, Cambridge (1992), DPhil in Mathematical Biology, Merton College, Oxford (1996). Postdoctoral positions at Princeton University, Oxford University, University of Edinburgh and UCSD. Awards include: NATO Postdoctoral Fellowship (1996), MRC Nonclinical Training Fellowship (1997-2000), a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award (2008-2013), and Thomson-Reuters Highly Cited Researcher awards in 2014, 2015, and 2016.
Atsushi Fukushima
I am a professor at Kyoto Prefectural University. My current research interests focus on characterization of metabolic regulatory networks and integrated analysis of multi-omics data in plants. I am a member of the editorial board for BMC Genomics, Plant Methods, Frontiers in Plant Science, Plants, BioTech, and PeerJ.