Advisory Board and Editors Microbiology
Eli N. Perencevich
Professor of Internal Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine. Director, Center for Comprehensive Access and Delivery Research & Evaluation (CADRE), Iowa City VA Healthcare System. Primary research areas: infection prevention, multi-drug resistant bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus
Paripok Phitsuwan
Dr. Paripok Phitsuwan is Assistant Professor in the Division of Biochemical Technology at King Mongkut's Univeristy of Technology, Thonburi.
Dr. Phitsuwan's research focuses on biomass conversion and processing, particularly lignin valorization. He is interested in carbohydrate and lignin active enzymes and their applications in biotechnology-relevant industries and environmental remediation.
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.
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.
Claudia Pogoreutz
My work broadly focuses on marine host-microbe systems, or ‘holobionts’, and the metabolic interactions that arise from and drive these complex symbiotic associations. I have always been interested in the microbial functions underlying holobiont health, resilience, and ecological adaptation, and how they shape holobiont stress responses. For this, I mainly use the cnidarian-algae symbiosis and associated bacteria as model systems, but have recently also started exploring the community structure, dynamics, and metabolic properties of fish skin microbiomes. My past and current research includes work on the contribution of nitrogen cycling pathways in cnidarian holobiont functioning and symbiotic breakdown, e.g., coral ‘bleaching’, as well as the elucidation of unknown functions of coral bacterial symbionts. For this, my approach has been to combine traditional physiological and culture-dependent techniques with high throughput-, next generation -omics applications, including whole genome and gene amplicon sequencing, transcriptomics, and proteomics. Currently, I am expanding my scope to targeted investigations of symbiotic metabolic interactions as a driver of osmoregulation in cnidarian holobionts employing nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry (NanoSIMS) along with isotopic profiling metabolomics.
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.
Maria del Carmen Portillo
MC Portillo holds a PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Seville (2007). She has held postdoctoral stays at IRNAS-CSIC (2007-2009, Seville), Boulder University (2009-2011, Colorado) and Abengoa Research (2012-2014, Seville). She currently conducts her research at the Rovira i Virgili University (2014-present, Tarragona). Her research line is the study of microbial diversity in wine-related environments applying molecular techniques and in particular, mass sequencing techniques.
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.
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).
Tanu Rana
Dr. Tanu Rana has a Ph.D. in Microbiology from AIIMS, New Delhi and a Master’s degree in biotechnology. Her research pursuits have spanned multiple facets of life sciences, from research on host-pathogen interaction to directing and collaborative research through a microscopy core facility.
Over the course of her career, Dr. Rana has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and presented her findings at national and international conferences, contributing meaningful insights to the fields of infectious diseases, and novel diagnostic approaches.
Beyond lab research, Dr. Rana is committed to the development of the next generation of healthcare professionals and scientists. She has taught and continues to teach medical, dental, master’s and graduate students, offering lectures, active learning opportunities, hands-on laboratory instruction, and mentorship that bridges theoretical knowledge and practical skills.
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.
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.