Advisory Board and Editors Synthetic Biology
Kyou-Hoon Han
Professor and Senior Investigator, Department of Bioinformatics, University of Science and Technology. Senior Investigator, Biomedical Translational Research Center, Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology (KRIBB)
Karmella A Haynes
Karmella Haynes is an assistant professor at Arizona State University’s School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering and judge emeritus for the International Genetically Engineered Machines Competition. Her work with Davidson College students on bacterial computers was featured on NPR's Science Friday and was recognized as "Publication of the Year" in 2008 by the Journal of Biological Engineering. Her research aims to regulate therapeutic genes by engineering human chromosomes.
Henning Hermjakob
As co-founder of the HUPO Proteomics Standards Initiative (PSI), Henning Hermjakob contributed to the development of a broad range of community data representation standards for proteomics and interactomics. Based on the trust and collaborative spirit built up in the development of data representation standards, he coordinated the next step, the intensive collaboration of proteomics and interactomics data resources globally in the IMEx [3] and ProteomeXchange [4] consortia, providing infrastructure support for the move towards an open data culture in proteomics. Building on his experience in interactomics, he is now co-PI of the Reactome Pathways database [1] and the BioModels resource of systems biology models [2]. Current research interests comprise distributed data resources (http://omicsdi.org) and complex data visualisation.
1. Fabregat A, et al. The Reactome pathway Knowledgebase. Nucleic Acids Res. 2016 Jan 4;44(D1):D481-7.
2. Chelliah V, et al. BioModels: ten-year anniversary. Nucleic Acids Res. 2015 Jan;43 (Database issue):D542-8.
3. Orchard S, et al. Protein interaction data curation: the International Molecular Exchange (IMEx) consortium. Nat Methods. 2012 Mar 27;9(4):345-350.
4. Vizcaíno JA, et al. ProteomeXchange provides globally coordinated proteomics data submission and dissemination. Nat Biotechnol. 2014 Mar 10;32(3):223-6.
5. Lander ES, et al. Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome.
Nature. 2001 Feb 15;409(6822):860-921.
Corey Nislow
Corey Nislow's laboratory develops and uses cutting edge tools to address this central question: how can we understand the biological commonalities in all of the life sciences; from embryonic development, to the spread of infectious diseases to better ways to treat cancer. Each of these disciplines can be explained in the context of competition, interaction and evolution. His lab studies the interface between genes and the environment using parallel genome-wide screens, high throughput cell-based assays and next generation sequencing. Most recently, he and his scientific partner, Dr. Guri Giaever, are exploring how laboratory experiments can co-opt evolutionary processes to understand drug action. He enjoys teaching all aspects of biotechnology, genomics and drug discovery. He got his PhD from the University of Colorado, worked at several Biotechnology companies and was at Stanford and University of Toronto before joining UBC in 2013. He has published 161 papers and run 19 marathons.
Luis G. C. Pacheco
Dr. Luis Pacheco is currently an Associate Professor of Biotechnology (Molecular Biology) at the Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA), in Salvador-BA, Brazil. During 2019, he has also been working as a Visiting Researcher at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School, Boston-MA, USA. He received his 2010 PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from a leading university in Brazil, the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), with an international split-site scholarship period (2008-2009) at the University of Warwick, in the United Kingdom. His research is focused on using functional genomics and synthetic biology approaches for development of novel genetic tools with broad applications in biotechnology, particularly in the fields of diagnostics of infectious diseases and therapeutics of inflammatory diseases.
Fabiana Perocchi
Fabiana Perocchi is an Emmy Noether Group Leader at the Helmholtz Zentrum München and Munich University. She trained as a postdoc with Vamsi Mootha at MGH and Harvard Medical School. She has a PhD in Functional Genomics from EMBL (European Molecular Biology Laboratory) and Heidelberg University, with Prof. Lars Steinmetz. Her research seeks to understand the signaling cascades that regulate mitochondrial metabolism and calcium homeostasis and their dysfunctions in neurodegenerative diseases.
Rob Russell
Co-director of Bioquant and Professor of Protein Evolution at Heidelberg University. Previously Group Leader at EMBL, Heidelberg, Academic Editor at FEBS Letters at PLoS Computational Biology.
Rajesh Kumar Singh
Dr. Rajesh Kumar Singh received his BPharm (2003) and MPharm (2005) from UIPS, Panjab University, Chandigarh. He started to teach pharmaceutical chemistry at the Shivalik College of Pharmacy, Nangal, in 2006, where he completed his PhD in 2013 from IKG Punjab Technical University (IKGPTU), Jalandhar. His major areas of research interest are computer-aided drug-design, polymer-drug conjugates for targeted delivery to CNS and cancerous cells, antimalarial therapeutic agents, and green chemistry approaches for chemical synthesis. Dr. Singh has over 15 years of teaching experience and has guided one 03 Ph.D. and 20 PG students. He is currently guiding 02 PhDs and 02 MPharm students. He has published more than 70 peer-reviewed SCI/SCOPUS-indexed scientific papers with a total JCR Impact Factor of more than 200 in various chemistry and pharmacy journals such as European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica-B, Bioorganic Chemistry, Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy, Pharmaceutical Research, European Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Mini-Reviews in Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Research, Med. Chem. Res., J. Enzyme Inhi. Med Chem., Res. Chem. Intermediate etc as main or corresponding author. He currently serves as an Editorial Advisory Board Member of 10 international journals, including the SCI-indexed MRMC (Bentham) and PeerJ. He has received the Publon Award 2016, 2017 and the Publon "Excellent Peer Reviewer Award" for outstanding reviewing of more than 290 research papers in different international journals of ACS, RSC, Springer, Elsevier, Dove, Informa, and Bentham whose Impact Factor varies from 1.0 to 12.5. He also has over 60 National and International Conference Abstracts, 5 Books, 5 Best Paper Presentation Awards, 1 Travel Grant to attend International Conferences, and 5 Research Projects funded by Indian Government Agencies. He is also on the panel of international reviewers for research proposals for Royal Society Grants. He is also serving as a PUBLON ACADEMY MENTOR and a BENTHAM BRAND AMBASSADOR. He has been recognized by the Editors as an OUTSTANDING REVIEWER for RSC Medicinal Chemistry journal (IF 4.1, Q1) and also for BENTHAM PUBLISHER in 2023. His name is recently featured in the list of top 2% scientists (2023) ranked by team of Stanford University, USA and Elsevier.
Thomas D Tullius
Professor of Chemistry, and Director of the Program in Bioinformatics, Boston University. Elected Fellow of the AAAS. Recipient of the Herbert A. Sober Award of the ASBMB. Research interests include developing new chemical probe methods (in particular, hydroxyl radical footprinting) for determining the structure of DNA, RNA, and DNA-protein complexes.
Shibiao Wan
Dr. Shibiao Wan is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Genetics, Cell Biology and Anatomy, and the Co-Director for the Bioinformatics and Systems Biology (BISB) PhD Program at University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC). He is also an Assistant Professor (courtesy) in the Department of Biostatistics at UNMC.
With more than 15 years of experience in machine learning, bioinformatics, and computational biology, Dr. Wan has published >50 articles in top-tiered journals such as Genome Research, Nature Communications, Science Advances, Circulation Research, Briefings in Bioinformatics, and Bioinformatics. Dr. Wan is the Editor-in-Chief for Current Proteomics, and an Editorial Board Member for a series of prestigious journals such as Briefings in Functional Genomics, Heliyon, BMC Bioinformatics, International Journal of Microbiology, PeerJ Computer Science, BioMed Research International, and Computational and Mathematical Methods, and a guest associate editor for multiple high-impact journals.
Dr Wan is a TPC member for >20 machine learning related international conferences including IEEE ICTAI. Dr. Wan is also a reviewer for >70 prestigious journals including Nature Biotechnology, Nature Methods, Nature Communications, Nature Computational Science, Science Advances, Nucleic Acids Research, Advanced Science, Cancer Research, Genome Biology, and Genome Medicine. Dr. Wan has received a number of accolades including the Springer Nature Editor of Distinction Award in 2025 by Springer Nature, the New Investigator Award in 2024 by UNMC, the FIRST Award in 2023 by Nebraska EPSCoR, the Outstanding Young Alumni Award in 2022 by HK PolyU as well as the Global Peer Review Awards (top 1%) in “Cross-Field” and “Biology and Biochemistry” in 2019 by Clarivate. Dr. Wan is a member of AACR, ISCB and ACM and an IEEE Senior Member.
Gary M. Wessel
Professor of Biology in the Department of Molecular Biology, Cellular Biology, and Biochemistry at Brown University.
Michael Wink
Prof. Dr. Michael Wink is Professor of Biology and Director at the Institute of Pharmacy and Molecular Biotechnology of Heidelberg University; Head of Biology Department (1989-2019). Senior professor since 2019. Editor of Diversity, Biotechnology Journal and Journal of Ornithology. Member of several editorial boards and scientific societies. Author of over 20 books and over 900 original peer-reviewed publications.