Advisory Board and Editors Microbiology
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.
Tanya Parish
Tanya Parish a Principal Investigator in the Center for Global Infectious Disease Research, Seattle Children’s Research Institute and a Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, University of Washington School of Medicine.
Her work focuses on the discovery of new drugs that are effective at curing drug-sensitive and drug-resistant tuberculosis with the added goal of shortening the time it takes to cure disease. This encompasses a range of early stage drug discovery including drug target identification and validation, high throughput screening and medicinal chemistry. In addition, her group works to understand the pathogenic mechanisms and basic biology of the global pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis and using this information to inform drug discovery.
Tanya is a microbiologist by training, with a background in mycobacteriology. She received her PhD at the National Institute for Medical Research investigating gene regulation in mycobacteria followed by postdoctoral research at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine studying several facets of the biology of M. tuberculosis. She previously held an academic post as Professor of Mycobacteriology at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, and was a Senior Vice President (Drug Discovery) at the Infectious Disease Research Institue.
Tanya has edited several books on mycobacteria and published numerous papers on the basic biology and genetics of M. tuberculosis.
Donovan H Parks
Donovan Parks holds a PhD in computer science and has developed a number of bioinformatic programs used by the research community including CheckM, STAMP, and GenGIS. He has expertise in bioinformatics relating to microbial ecology, phylogenetics, and metagenome-assembled genomes. He is currently working as a bioinformatic consultant with the Australian Centre for Ecogenomics where he is working on an initiative to resolve long-standing issues within bacterial and archaeal nomenclature and developing new tools for reconstructing and validating genomes obtained directly from environmental samples.
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.
Bert Poolman
Professor of Biochemistry & Program director of the Centre for Synthetic Biology. Focus area leader of the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials. Board member of the Netherlands Proteomics Centre. Coordinator of Network for Integrated Cellular Homeostasis. Elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).
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.
Alexandre J Poulain
Alexandre Poulain received his PhD in Biology from Université de Montréal (Canada), his MSc in aquatic toxicology and biogeochemistry from the INRS-Eau, Terre et Environnement from Quebec City (Canada) and his BSc in Environmental Sciences from Université d’Angers (France). He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) where he learned about geobiology. His research investigates with how microbes control the mobility and toxicity of toxic metal(old)s in temperate and arctic environments.