Advisory Board and Editors Bioinformatics
Owen S Wangensteen
PhD in Biology, PhD in Chemistry. Lecturer in Marine Zoology at the Dpt. of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences, University of Barcelona
Research interests include: eukaryotic metabarcoding, marine molecular ecology, marine biodiversity, phylogeography, and bioinformatics.
Claus O Wilke
Professor and Department Chair, Department of Integrative Biology, The University of Texas at Austin. Received his PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Bochum, Germany, in 1999. Postdoc at Caltech, 2000-2005.
Robert Winkler
Robert Winkler is Principal Investigator of the Laboratory of Biochemical and Instrumental Analysis at the CINVESTAV Unidad Irapuato and faculty member for the postgraduate programs Plant Biotechnology and Integrative Biology. His research topics include novel mass spectrometry techniques such as low-temperature plasma ionization and covalent protein staining, new approaches in the high-throughput metabolomic profiling of plants, computational mass spectrometry and proteomics.
Yuri I. Wolf
Lead Scientist, Koonin Group at the Computational Biology Branch, National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, Maryland).
Zhijin Wu
I develop statistical methodology and software for the analysis of -omics data. I am particularly interested in the regulation of transcription: the molecular mechanism as well as its association with disease.
Rongling Wu
Prof. Rongling Wu is a Distinguished Professor of Public Health Sciences and Statistics at Pennsylvania State Cancer Institute and Director of the Center for Statistical Genetics.
His research interests include; Quantitative Trait Loci, Genes, Growth, Population, Multifactorial Inheritance, Statistical Models, Genome, Populus, Genotype, Single Nucleotide Polymorphism, Phenotype and Chromosome Mapping.
Wei Xu
Dr. Wei Xu received his Ph.D. in Biostatistics from University of Toronto. He is currently a scientist and principle biostatistician in Princess Margaret Hospital on clinical research of cancer diseases. He is a faculty member at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto and on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Medical Statistics and Informatics. Dr. Xu's research interests are statistical genetics and clinical trial design and analysis. He is the author or co-author of over 100 publications in peer-review journals.
Rendong Yang
Dr. Yang is an assistant professor and section leader for cancer genomics at the Hormel Institute. Dr. Yang obtained his PhD in the China Agricultural University, where his work involved the topic of microarray data analysis. Briefly he developed two statistical models, called ARSER and LSPR, to detect periodically expressed transcripts from evenly or unevenly sampled temporal microarray gene expression profiles respectively. By applying these algorithms to Arabidopsis and rice transcriptome, a list of novel clock-controlled genes that regulating plant circadian rhythm were identified. Dr. Yang finished his postdoctoral training at Emory University, where his research switched to cancer genomics and epigenomics. Working with researchers in Winship Cancer Institute, he developed a bioinformatics pipeline to analyze the whole genome mate-pair and pair-end sequencing and RNA-seq data from three tumor cells in multiple myeloma, which leads to discovering a novel SPI-ZNF287 t(11;17) translocation. After postdoctoral training, Dr. Yang joined Supercomputing Institute at University of Minnesota as a Bioinformatics Analyst working on both clinical genomics and prostate cancer research to define and characterize AR gene rearrangements from DNA-seq data, and also to interrogate genome-wide binding profiles of AR and AR variants in prostate cancer cells and tissues.
Venkata Yellapantula
Bioinformatician currently at Memorial Loan Kettering Cancer Center with 10 years of experience in analyzing high-throughput genomic and proteomic data. I have a diverse background in handling raw exome & whole genome sequencing, RNA-Seq and ChIP-Seq data to identify genetic aberrations. Proficient in development and implementing pipelines and algorithms and post analysis of aberrations identified through individual assays to glean novel biological patterns. Led large-scalegenomic efforts such as MMRF CoMMpass trial, ICGC & TCGA.
Mark T Young
’m a Scottish evolutionary biologist and vertebrate palaeontologist. My research focus is on major evolutionary transitions: understanding both how and why the vertebrate body-plan radically transforms when adapting to new niches. My interdisciplinary approach including biomechanics, comparative anatomy, neuroanatomy, nomenclature, philosophy of biology, phylogenetics, and systematics/taxonomy.
My areas of research are:
(1) The land-to-sea transition of fossil marine crocodylomorphs. This focuses on the biology of Thalattosuchia (marine crocs that evolved flippers and a tail fin during the Age of Dinosaurs). My research includes understanding their endocranial anatomy, sensory systems, evolutionary relationships, and morphofunctional diversity. Finally, what do thalattosuchians tell us about common evolutionary pathways seen in secondarily aquatic vertebrates?
(2) The air-to-land transition within Columbidae (pigeons and doves). This focuses on the biology of the Dodo (Raphus cucullatus) and the Solitaire (Pezophaps solitaria). My research includes understanding their skeletal anatomy, locomotory biomechanics, and evolutionary relationships. Finally, what does the Dodo tell us about common evolutionary pathways seen in secondarily flightless birds.
(3) Philosophy of biology. The goal of the sciences is to cumulatively gather descriptive and ultimately causal understanding of objects and events. My research includes ensuring that my work is compatible with the goal of scientific inquiry, and to promote a view of biology and biological research that encapsulates biological theory, applied technological innovation, with a philosophical underpinning.
(4) Promotion of best practice in descriptive biology and zoological nomenclature. Given the current ‘age of extinctions’ we are living through and the dire shortage of trained taxonomists, there is a greater need than ever to ensure that taxonomic and descriptive research meets best practice and is compatible with the goal of scientific inquiry.
I am an ICZN Commissioner, a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, and a member of the Royal Society of Biology (RSB). I have Chartered Biologist status, registered with the RSB. I am a member of two IUCN Species Survival Commission groups: the Crocodile Specialist Group, and the Pigeon & Dove Specialist Group. I am the editor-in-chief of Historical Biology, and also an academic editor for PeerJ and PeerJ Open Advances in Zoology.
Jiyang Yu
Dr. Jiyang Yu's research is focused on systems biology, systems immunology, single-cell systems biology, immuno-oncology, translational oncology and functional genomics. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Zhejiang University, China. In 2008-2012, he was trained in Dr. Andrea Califano’s laboratory at Columbia University and earned his PhD degree in Biomedical Informatics.