Advisory Board and Editors Genomics
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.
Aleksandra A Galitsyna
Aleksandra is a PostDoc at IMES Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), specializing in chromatin architecture analysis using Hi-C, Micro-C, and imaging data. Notable for contributing to Open2C software with the Open Chromosome Collective. Currently, Aleksandra explores polymer simulations of chromatin in early embryogenesis of vertebrates. Her focus centers on understanding the biological implications of various 3D genome structures and their connection to cell fate decisions.
Ioannis Ganopoulos
Dr. Ganopoulos received his BSc degree in Agriculture from the University of Thessaly (2000-2005) and his MS and PhD in Plant Breeding from AUTH (2005-2007/2008–2013). He has been awarded a Heracleitus PhD scholarship by the European Social Fund and the Hellenic National Fund. His recent scientific interests focus on epigenetics, DNA methylation, whole genome sequencing and trascriptomic analysis for molecular breeding purposes. He has participated in four research projects, one of them competitive European project. He has published 93 reviewed articles in SCI journals and h-index=27 (citations 2051 in Scholar google). He was a co-worker in national/international projects and he is Editor in Biochemical Genetics and PeerJ 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.
Jianye Ge
Dr. Jianye Ge is the Associate Director of the Center for Human Identification and an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology & Genetics at the University of North Texas Health Science Center. His research relates primarily to forensic genetics, bioinformatics, and data mining. The software programs he developed have been used by the Federal and State government agencies to assist in solving criminal cases.
Mikhail S Gelfand
Vice-Director for Science at the Kharkevich Institute for Information Transmission Problems. Professor of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, and Higher School of Economics. Member of Academia Europaea. Recipient of the 2007 Baev Prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Member of Editorial Boards of PeerJ and Biology Direct.