Advisory Board and Editors Microbiology

Journal Factsheet
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I told my colleagues that PeerJ is a journal where they need to publish if they want their paper to be published quickly and with the strict peer review expected from a good journal.
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Heedoo Lee

Dr. Heedoo Lee is an Assistant Professor within the Department of Biology and Microbiology at Changwon National University, Changwon, South Korea. His research interests include Immunophysiology, Respiratory disease, Lung injury and inflammation, Extracellular vesicles and Exosomes.

Elliot J Lefkowitz

Professor of Microbiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB); Director of Informatics for the UAB Center for Clinical and Translational Science; Data Secretary of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) and Editor-In-Chief of the ICTV Online (10th) Report on Virus Taxonomy. My research focuses on contributing to the understanding of microbial (especially viral) genomics and evolution by developing and utilizing computational tools and bioinformatics techniques to mine sequence and other data for significant patterns characteristic of function and/or evolution.

Bill P Leggat

I was awarded my PhD from James Cook University in 2001 where my research project focussed on photosynthesis and bleaching in the symbiotic giant clam Tridacna gigas. I then moved to the University of Queensland where I was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Centre for Marine Studies in the laboratory of Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg. In 2007 I returned to James Cook Univeristy as a Lecturer in the discpline of Biochemistry, I am now a Associate Professor and head of the Symbiosis Genomics Research Group and a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. The overarching aim of my research is to link transcriptomic and metabolomic changes to whole organism responses and acclimation. My research utilises genomic and metabolomic techniques to determine how the coral holobiont responds to anthropogenic changes, including increasing temperatures, ocean acidification and eutrophication.

Jack C. Leo

I study bacterial pathogenesis, focusing on autotransporters of Gram-negative bacteria. These proteins are self-contained secretion systems and surface molecules that mediate a number of virulence functions. I aim to understand three aspects of autotransporter-mediated pathogenesis: 1) the mechanisms of virulence functions, 2) the biogenesis of autotransporters and 3) regulation of gene expression. All three are potential sites for intervention to prevent host colonisation and infection.

David Levine

David Levine, PT, PhD, DPT, Diplomate ABPTS, CCRP, Cert. DN
Dr. Levine is a Professor and the Walter M. Cline Chair of Excellence in Physical Therapy at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He is an adjunct professor at the University Of Tennessee College Of Veterinary Medicine and North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine. In addition, he is board certified as a specialist in orthopedics by the American Board of Physical Therapy Specialties and is also certified in dry needling. Dr. Levine has been working and conducting research in many areas with an emphasis in veterinary physical rehabilitation and is co-director of the University of Tennessee certificate program in canine rehabilitation. He is a co-editor of multiple books including “Canine Rehabilitation and Physical Therapy”, “Essential Facts of Physiotherapy in Dogs and Cats”, and Gait Analysis: An Introduction. He continues to practice in canine rehabilitation and human physical therapy in addition to his University position. He has presented at over 100 conferences, and has lectured in more than a dozen countries. Dr. Levine has published in numerous peer-reviewed journals with over 75 publications. His latest research focuses on bacterial contamination in medical equipment, animal assisted therapy, and laser to improve muscle endurance.

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.

Xing Li

Dr. Xing Li is an Assistant Professor and Associate Consultant in the Division of Biomedical Statistics and Informatics, Department of Health Science Research at Mayo Clinic - voted the best hospital by U.S. News & World Report. Dr. Li completed his PhD in Bioinformatics from The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. Dr. Li also holds a Masters Degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Bachelors Degree in Microbiology. Dr. Li’s research interests focus on machine learning, bioinformatics, and statistical data mining in large scale data in biomedical research, such as next generation sequencing data (whole genome sequencing, RNA-seq, microarray data), in the file. He has published more than 20 peer-reviewed papers in reputable journals and book chapters in the fields of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics, cancer research, cardiovascular disease, embryonic stem cell (ESC) and induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) research, and human genomics, genetics and development, and Microbiology. Dr. Li’s publications have been highlighted as Journal Cover Stories, Journal Featured Articles, Highlights Section Papers, Must Read by Faculty 1000, and ESC & iPSC News, etc. Dr. Li has been developing data analysis tools, such as RCircle and PCA3d, etc. Dr. Li is also a member of American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB), American Statistics Association (ASA) and American Heart Association (AHA).

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).