Advisory Board and Editors Microbiology
Xiaomin Li
Professor of Environmental Science at SCNU Environmental Research Institute (SERI) in South China Normal University (SCNU).
She was the awardee of Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA, 2015) from Australian Research Council, Guangdong Natural Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars (2017), and Guangdong Special Support Plan for High-Level Young Talents of Science and Technology Innovation (2017).
Her research areas include biogeochemistry, environmental microbiology, and soil pollution control. She has been committed to the transformation mechanisms of organochlorines and arsenic in soils driven by microorganisms, and their coupling processes with transformation of carbon, iron, and nitrogen.
Dongliang Liu
Dr. Dongliang Liu is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Surgery at the Baylor College of Medicine. His research interests include: Cancer therapy, especially for pancreatic cancer immunotherapy; Chimeric virus-like particles (VLP) vaccine, especially for cancer vaccines; Novel antibiotics development including antimicrobial peptides; Epitomics and multi-epitope peptide vaccine development for pathogenic viruses.
Nicholas J Loman
Nick works as an Independent Research Fellow in the Institute for Microbiology and Infection at the University of Birmingham, sponsored by an MRC Fellowship in Biomedical Informatics. His research explores the use of cutting-edge genomics and metagenomics approaches to the diagnosis, treatment and surveillance of infectious disease. Nick has so far used high-throughput sequencing to investigate outbreaks of important pathogens such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa,Acinetobacter baumannii and Shiga-toxin producing Escherichia coli. His current work focuses on the application of novel sequencing technologies such as the Oxford Nanopore for genome diagnosis and epidemiology of important pathogens, including most recently real-time surveillance of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. A more general aim is to develop bioinformatics tools to aid the interpretation of genome and metagenome-scale data in routine clinical practice in collaboration.
Nguyen Esmeralda López-Lozano
Dr. Nguyen Esmeralda López-Lozano is a microbial ecologist who earned her doctorate in Biomedical Sciences from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). She has extensive research experience in microbial diversity and ecosystem processes, mainly focusing on biogeochemical cycles in desert soils.
Since 2014, Dr. López-Lozano has been a CONACyT professor in the Environmental Sciences Division at the Potosi Institute of Scientific and Technological Research. Her research focuses on plant microbiomes in arid environments and the role of microorganisms as bioindicators of ecosystem health. She investigates how both biotic and abiotic factors shape microbial communities and utilizes microbial parameters to assess environmental stress. In recent years, her work has also explored how microbiome insights can be applied to restoration and conservation efforts in arid regions.
Mohamed Lounis
Dr Mohamed Lounis is a Lecturer at the Department of Agroveterinary Sciences, University of Ziane Achour Djelfa, Algeria. He completed his PhD in veterinary epidemiology from the University of Blida in 2018.
His research broadly concentrates on human and animal epidemiology. More precisely, he began his research on animal colibacillosis including calf and avian colibacillosis with Escherichia coli genotyping and phenotyping and antibiotic resistance. Later, he conducted multiple studies related to the epidemiology of COVID-19 in Algeria and in Arabic countries. These works were mainly based on modeling the propagation of the disease and the attitudes toward COVID-19 and its vaccines.
Dr. Lounis is also working on a One health approach through different surveys about multiple animal and public health threats including drug use and antibiotic resistance, infectious diseases including HPV infections, AIDS, monkeypox, viral hepatitis (A-E) and other zoonotic diseases including bacterial (tuberculosis, brucellosis...), parasitic (echinococcosis, leishmaniasis…) and viral (rabies, arboviroses…) diseases. He is also working on the epidemiology of non transmissible diseases including cancer, diabetes, hypertension..
Erica Lumini
Dr. Erica Lumini is a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection, National Research Council of Italy. Her general area of research focuses on Environmental Microbiology, and more specifically:
• Interaction between soil microbes (nitrogen-fixing actinomycetes; EM ectomycorrhizal fungi; arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, AMF) and plants of agricultural and forestry interest.
• Molecular characterization of symbiotic endobacteria and microorganisms associated with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi.
• Molecular ecology, biodiversity and soil microbial networks (prokaryotes, eukaryotes) in natural and agroforestry ecosystems (soils subjected to land-use gradient).
Mahmoud Mabrok
Dr. Mahmooud Mabrok is an Assistant Professor of Fish Diseases and Management at the Suez Canal University, Egypt. He is also a senior postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Microbiology, Fish and Infectious Diseases at Chulalongkorn University, Thailand.
Dr. Mabrok's work broadly concentrates on the development of novel diagnostic tools (PCR-Q PCR, RPA-LFD isothermal amplification for rapid and precise detection of most threatening pathogens, particularly in aquatic species. He also researches multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacterial strains that may affect animal hosts, with the aim of addressing this newly emerging phenomenon and the related public health concerns. In addition to this, Dr. Mabrok carries out research with the aim of finding an alternative remedy for diseases control and/or treatment of infectious diseases using eco-friendly active ingredients, including herbal extracts, prebiotics, probiotics, and synbiotics. Recently, he focused on host pathogen interaction, specifically with the intention of investigating host innate and/or adaptive immunity to cope with bacterial infection.
Dr. Mabrok has many international publications in the field of Fish Diseases, Microbiology and Immunology, and currently works as an Academic Editor for PLOS ONE, USA, BMC Research Note Springer Nature, Journal Of Marine Science Hindawi Group. He has also been appointed as a Guest Editorial Board Member in Frontiers in Bioscience, International Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Research. He is a scientific reviewer at BMC Research Note, PLOS ONE, Aquaculture, Journal of Fish Diseases, Fish Shellfish Immunology, Environmental Science and Pollution Research, and AMP Express journals.
Barbara J MacGregor
Research Asst. Professor, Marine Sciences, Univ. of North Carolina - Chapel Hill (2003-2017); Postdoctoral fellow, MPI – Marine Microbiology, Bremen, Germany (2000-2003); Research assistant and postdoctoral associate, Civil Engineering Dept., Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. (1994-1999); PhD, Bacteriology, University of Wisconsin - Madison (1994); BS (1984) and MS (1986), Biology and Marine Microbiology, University of Massachusetts - Boston.
Research projects include: new methods to directly link species identity with carbon source utilization; direct profiling of microbial communities without PCR; direct detection of microbial enzymes in environmental samples.
Thulani P Makhalanyane
Thulani Makhalanyane is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry, Genetics and Microbiology and undertakes research at the Centre for Microbial Ecology and Genomics. His research has focused almost entirely on understanding the ecology of microbial communities in extreme environments.
Kathleen Marchal
Associate Professor Bioinformatics, Department of Bioinformatics and Plant Biotechnology, Ghent University, Belgium; VIB department Plant Systems Biology. Associate Professor Bioinformatics, Department of Microbial and Molecular Plant Sciences, KU Leuven, Belgium. Recipient of the DSM award 2000. Recipient of the Biannual Siemens award 2002. Associate editor of BMC Release notes, BMC Bioinformatics, Journal of Integrative Omics
Florentine Marx
Associate Professor at the Medical University of Innsbruck. We are interested in the mechanistic function and structure of antimicrobial/antifungal proteins and peptides and the identification of target molecules for the development of new antimicrobial/antifungal therapies.
Leonidas Matsakas
Dr. Matsakas is currently Senior Lecturer at the Biochemical Process Engineering at Luleå University of Technology (Sweden). He received his PhD in Industrial Biotechnology from the school of Chemical Engineering at National Technical University of Athens (Greece) in 2015. His main research activities focus on the development of methods for the pretreatment and fractionation of lignocellulosic and aquatic biomass and the subsequent conversion of the cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin streams to biofuels, bio-based chemicals and bio-materials through biochemical and (thermo)chemical methods. He is also actively working on the development of mixotrophic and heterotrophic microalgae biorefinery processes for the production of high-added value compounds, such as omega-3 PUFAs, pigments and protein.