Ami Bhatt, Assistant Professor, Departments of Medicine and Genetics, Divisions of Hematology and Blood and Marrow Transplantation, Stanford University

Ami is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Genetics at Stanford University School of Medicine. She earned an M.D. and Ph.D. (Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) at the University of California, San Francisco and did her post-graduate training at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute.

Owen White, Associate Director, Institute For Genome Sciences; Director of The UM Center for Health-Related Informatics and Bioimaging (CHIB)

Dr. White is an internationally recognized expert in bioinformatics with more than 15 years of experience. His primary role is to enable the researchers at School of Medicine to perform state of the art genomic and transcriptomic analysis at the University of Maryland, School of Medicine. He leads a group of 25 scientists and engineers at the Institute for Genome Sciences who are collectively responsible for the development of nearly all production-level annotation pipelines, database systems, and tools for automated and manual annotation of genomes and metagenomic data sets. Support for this work is dervived from a combination of fee for services with university investigators and joint research funding with other investigators. He has also obtained funding to build a number of genome analysis tools including tools to build bioinformatics pipelines, and visualization tools.

Michael Snyder, Stanford W. Ascherman Professor and Chair, Department of Genetics
Director, Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine

Joao Xavier, Associate Faculty Member, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

“Computational Biology Microbiome ecology: lessons from patients receiving bone marrow transplantation”

Computational biologist Joao Xavier studies computer models and quantitative experiments of biofilm and cancer growth. He received his PhD from Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Tami Lieberman, Helmholtz Career Development Professor in the Institute for Medical Engineering and Sciences at MIT, and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT. 

"Rapid bacterial evolution within individual human microbiomes"

Tami obtained her PhD in Systems Biology at Harvard University, working in the laboratory of Roy Kishony, and did her postdoctoral training in Eric Alm's laboratory.  The Lieberman Lab uses computational and experimental approaches to investigate bacterial evolution within individual people, inspired by the realization that billions of mutations are created within each person's microbiome daily. A key approach in the lab is high-throughput  

Eran Segal, Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the Weizmann Institute of Science

"Towards personalizing treatments using microbiome and clinical data"

Eran Segal is heading a lab with a multi-disciplinary team of computational biologists and experimental scientists in the area of Computational and Systems biology. His group has extensive experience in machine learning, computational biology, probabilistic models, and analysis of heterogeneous high-throughput genomic data. His research focuses on Nutrition, Genetics, Microbiome, and Gene Regulation and their effect on health and disease. His aim is to develop personalized nutrition and personalized medicine.

Carolina Tropini, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Microbiology and Immunology

Paul (“Joey”) McMurdie, Staff Scientist in Biostatistics, Whole Biome, Inc., USA

“Live SynbioticTM and the Human Microbiome”

Paul (“Joey”) McMurdie is a Stanford alumnus advised by professors Alfred Spormann (PhD) and Susan Holmes in Statistics (postdoc). His two major postdoc publications on methods for analysis of microbiome data have a combined 150,000 views and 2000 citations. Joey created and maintains an open-source R package for microbiome analysis, phyloseq, which for several years has been among the top 5% most downloaded packages in Bioconductor. Joey made the jump to industry 4 years ago, and is currently a Senior Staff Scientist for Data Science and Biostatistics at Whole Biome Inc in San Francisco, where he leads a team developing analysis methods for discovery and production of novel and efficacious probiotics, including a product currently in clinical trial for the treatment of Type-2 diabetes.

Sarah Hird, Assistant Professor in Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of Connecticut.

"Evolutionary signal in the avian microbiome"

Sarah's primary research interest is in how the microbiome has interacted with avian evolution. What role have microbes played in bird diversification and does this role differ from other major branches on the tree of life? She is also interested in microbial ecology, host-microbe interactions, phylogenetics and bioinformatics. She is also interested in how we can diversify and democratize the STEM fields and Academia.

Dr. Kjersti Aagaard, Henry and Emma Meyer Professor in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Baylor College of Medicine, where she serves as Vice Chair.

Kjersti received her MD & PhD from the University of Minnesota/Mayo Clinic. Following her resident training at the University of Minnesota and MFM fellowship at the University of Utah, she joined the faculty at Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Aagaard carries joint appointments in Molecular and Human Genetics, Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, Translational Biology and Molecular Medicine program, and Molecular and Cellular Biology.  

Soumaya Zlitni, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Hematology, Stanford University

Anne Dekas, Assistant Professor at Stanford University in the Earth System Science Department. 

"Linking Function and Phylogeny in the Marine Microbiome" 

Anne is interested in how microbial life affects the chemistry and climate of our planet, today and throughout time. Her research combines tools from molecular biology and isotope geochemistry to identify and quantify the metabolic capabilities, activity, and interactions of deep-sea bacteria and archaea.

Owen White, Associate Director, Institute For Genome Sciences; Director of The UM Center for Health-Related Informatics and Bioimaging (CHIB)

Dr. White is an internationally recognized expert in bioinformatics with more than 15 years of experience. His primary role is to enable the researchers at School of Medicine to perform state of the art genomic and transcriptomic analysis at the University of Maryland, School of Medicine.  

Gavin Sherlock, Associate Professor,Department of Genetics, School of Medicine, Stanford University

Ramesh Nair, PhD, Acting Director, Bioinformatics, Stanford Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine, Stanford University

As Acting Director, Bioinformatics at Stanford Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine (SCGPM), Ramesh is the bioinformatician in residence for the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) initiated Stem Cell Center of Excellence (CESCG). He is responsible for diverse bioinformatics needs for the Center Initiated Projects and its extensive collaboration network.