Advisory Board and Editors Infectious Diseases
Joanne Berghout
Dr. Berghout received her PhD in Biochemistry from McGill University in Montreal, QC where she researched the genetics of complex traits and susceptibility to infectious disease in humans and mouse models. Following that, she spent three years as the Outreach Coordinator for the Mouse Genome Informatics (MGI) database in Bar Harbor, ME. There, she trained researchers in genetics, genomics, data structures and data mining to answer biological questions, and worked closely with other members of the MGI group to develop and optimize the MGI resource. Now her research interests include genetics of all kinds, personalized medicine, big data, and scientific communication. She is currently pursuing projects in precision medicine for analysis of transcriptome data from patients with rare lung diseases (Sarcoidosis, Coccidiomycosis), and integrative network analysis of complex traits including Alzheimer's Disease. She is currently appointed at the University of Arizona's Center for Biomedical Informatics and Biostatistics (CB2) and The Center for Genetics and Genomic Medicine (TCG2M) in Tucson, AZ.
Gorka Bidegain
Gorka Bidegain (GB) is a Senior Lecturer of the University of the Basque Country at the Department of Applied Mathematics. His main research interests lie within marine ecological and population dynamics modelling, including disease ecology and pathogen transmission. He conducts laboratory/field experiments and uses advanced mathematical and computational ecological modelling techniques to identify and asses the population and ecosystem responses to pressures and ecological and environmental heterogeneities. GB is developing new models, methodologies and algorithms with implications for the understanding of how climate variability interacts with marine populations and host-pathogen systems.
GB has participated in more than 20 national and international R&D competitive projects including three EU projects and three National Science Foundation (NSF). GB has published more than 25 articles in top rank peer reviewed journals, 3 book chapters, several scientific/technical reports and open access computer codes and Graphical User Interface for disease modelling (R, Matalab).
He is member of the Ecology of Infectious Marine Diseases Research Coordination Network (EIMD-RCN) (Cornell University, USA). He is also member of the Marine Biological Association and the Estuarine and Coastal Sciences Association
Kate N Bishop
Group Leader at The Francis Crick Institute from April 2015. Programme Leader and Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellow at National Institute for Medical Research in London, UK from end of 2008. Previously, Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow at King’s College London.
Kate Bishop received a first class (hon) BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Bath following two research placements; one at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden and the other at Chiron Corporation in San Francisco, USA.
After completing her PhD studies with Jonathan Stoye working on the retroviral restriction factor, Fv1, she undertook postdoctoral training with Michael Malim at King's College London, investigating the APOBEC family of retroviral restriction factors.
Kate was awarded a prestigious Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship in 2004 to continue her APOBEC research.
Ariel J Blocker
2011-2017: Reader in Microbiology, Schools of Cellular & Molecular Medicine and Biochemistry, University of Bristol
2007-2011: as above, Senior Lecturer in Microbiology
2001-2007: Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford: Guy Newton Senior Research Fellow
1997-2000 : Institute Pasteur, Paris: Postdoctoral fellow
1996 : EMBL, Heidelberg: Postdoctoral fellow
1991-1995 : EMBL, Heidelberg: PhD in Cell Biology
1988-1991 : University College, London: B. Sc. in Genetics, 1st class
Glen M Borchert
Dr. Glen Borchert holds joint appointments as an Assistant Professor in Biology and Pharmacology at the University of South Alabama. He originally received a B.S. in Biology from the University of Tennessee then completed a Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of Iowa. Dr. Borchert’s research focuses largely on identifying novel genetic regulators and defining their roles in oncogenesis, microbiology and speciation. Since starting his laboratory at South Alabama in August 2012, Dr. Borchert has published dozens of papers in peer reviewed journals and had numerous grant applications funded including a highly prestigious NSF CAREER award (2014-2019).
Erika M Braga
Erika Braga has a BA in Biology and a Ph.D in Parasitology from Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil, where she is a Professor of Parasitology. Head of Malaria Laboratory at UFMG. Her research is focused on two distinct approaches: study of immune response in human malaria and study of avian malaria in wild birds. Academic Editor of PeerJ and PLOS ONE.
Miriam Braunstein
Professor of Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology at Colorado State University. Our laboratory studies the basic biology and pathogenic mechanisms of mycobacterial pathogens, including Mycobacterium tuberculosis and nontuberculous mycobacteria
Dunja Bruder
Dunja Bruder did her PhD thesis in immunology focussing on T cell responses to bacterial toxins (1996-1999) followed by a postdoc in the field of mucosal immunology at the HZI in Braunschweig (2000-2006). After several scientific stays abroad (Harvard Medical School; Yale University School of Medicine) she became head of the research group “Immune Regulation” at the HZI (2006). In addition, since 2011 Dunja Bruder is Professor for "Infection Immunology" at the University Hospital in Magdeburg.
Tanya Amanda Camacho-Villegas
Tanya Camacho-Villegas is a Researcher for Mexico in the Medical and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Unit, CIATEJ, A.C., located in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico (2014-present). She is a member of the Mexican National System of Researchers level I. She works in recombinant protein design, cloning, and production (batch and bioreactor scale). She specializes in phage display for isolating single-domain antibodies such as vNAR´s or peptide isolation with diagnostic applications. Recently, she used the vNAR as an immuno-carrier for NPs for theranostics applications for breast cancer and glioblastomas as models.
She has received a BSc in Biology from the Science Faculty, UABC (2004) and a Marine Biotechnology MSc in CICESE (2007) focusing on the selection and validation of vNARs with anti-cytokines properties as candidates for TNFalpha and VEGF165 neutralizing in humans disorders.
She has received a PhD in Molecular Ecology and Biotechnology from the Marine Science Faculty at UABC (2012). She received a distinction in the Ph.D. dissertation
and fellowships from CONAHCYT for MSc, Ph.D., and Postdoc studies. She was the leader of four projects related to biotechnology companies. She was the author of patents related to vNAR as anti-cytokines or immuno-carriers for drug delivery.
Dee A Carter
Professor in Microbiology, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney, Australia. Member of the Marie Bashir Institute, University of Sydney. Professional Member of the Australian Society for Microbiology and Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.
Francesco Chirico
Contract Professor of Occupational Epidemiology at Post-graduate School of Occupational Health, Department of Life Sciences and Public Health, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome. Official Medical Doctor at Health Service Deopartment, Italian State Police. Editor in Chief and Founder at "Journal of Health and Social Sciences: The Italian Journal for Interdisciplinary Health and Social Development".
Christopher Cooper
Senior Lecturer in Biological Sciences at the University of Huddersfield, since 2015. Previously Junior Research Fellow, College Lecturer In Biochemistry and various postdocs at the University of Oxford (2013-15). Working on DNA replication, genome integrity and transcription factors in human cancers (and also in prokaryotes). Additional interests in phylogenomics and novel protein expression systems.