Career Profile
My research interests are quite broad, but one of the main drivers of my research is that I find the nature of microorganisms very intriguing. Under the umbrella of genomic epidemiology, I am interested in studying important pathogens of humans, animals, and plants. From the applied to the fundamental questions of ecology and evolution, speciation, lifestyle transitions, host ranges, recombination, and selection pressures, I study the evolutionary history of pathogens in space and time, and its implications. I have implemented a wide variety of tools in biological sciences to address interesting questions of fungal and bacterial biology, including non-parametric statistics, biostatistics, and classical statistics; taxonomy, phylogenetics, population genomics, and clasical epidemiology approaches. Most recently, I have used computational biology, bioinformatics, and quantitative biology to study patterns of recombination and evolution of human and animal bacterial pathogens. In the future, I want to contribute to larger efforts to elucidate the biogeography and historical context, ecological roles, and potential management strategies of important pathogens.
Experiences
Responsibilities: Building a research program aimed to better understand the ecology of important plant pathogens in the state of Nebraska and in the northern hemisphere. Advising and mentoring undergraduate and graduate students, and postdocs. Serving in graduate committees. Writing local and federal grants. Teaching three courses in plant pathology and fungal ecology. Teaching courses in disease development and fundamental aspects of disease epidemiology. Serving in local, national, and international research committees and institutions for development of collaborative research environments.
Responsibilities: Elucidating patterns of evolution, diversity, ecology, and incidence of human, animal, and plant bacterial pathogens, including Staphylococcus aureus and Streptomyces spp. from bat caves. From sampling and handling of isolates to sequencing and analyzing genomes using state-of-the-art bioinformatic tools to address questions about the evolution, main lineages, recombination, selection, and correlations with the associated metadata. Mentoring undergraduate and graduate students. Organizing and judging student research competitions.
Carrying out and communicating research associated with an emerging disease of soybean, taproot decline (TRD), which led to the description of the novel pathogen Xylaria necrophora. Building and maintaining a collection of X. necrophora isolates and its associated metadata. Sequencing and analyzing over 300 fungal specimens for population genetics studies. Extracting secondary metabolites and testing in greenhouse and in vitro experiments. Mentoring undergraduate and graduate students, which led to two honors theses related to the development of a quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) assay for X. necrophora written by undergraduate students and many contributions with graduate students.
Designing, planning, and executing field and laboratory experiments to assess the indirect effects of glyphosate on plant nutrition, disease incidence and severity, and pathogen biomass (using quantitative PCR). Assisting fellow lab mates in field and lab experiments. Training and mentoring of undergraduate students.
Projects
This section describes some of my current research projects.
Publications
This section represents peer-reviewed publications (and submissions) as of October 2022.