Dean Vik, PhD

Bioinformatics Scientist

CV in ResearchGate

I have a background in viral ecogenomics, metagenomics, and ecological statistics. My primary focus during my early training was to develop the “rules and tools" needed to identify novel archaeal viruses in unique environments, particularly deep oxygen-limited marine environments. During this process, a specialty in manually curating viral genomes from functional annotations (is this a dsDNA phage, archaeal virus or something else), auxiliary metabolic genes, and conducting community ecological comparisons based on differential abundances became my mainstays. My role in the CoMS microbiome platform is to develop and maintain automated pipelines that process a variety of sample types (metagenomes, viromes, metatranscriptomes, etc…) from raw reads through the various analytical steps to be able to answer the questions: What organisms/genes/transcripts are present and in what abundance? How do these communities compare with others? What proportion of the samples do they represent? What metabolisms are they involved with? 

Christine Sun, PhD

Bioinformatics Scientist · Computational Biologist

CV 

Christine Sun is a computational biologist with extensive experience in microbial ecology and dynamics, specializing in metagenomic and genomic analyses. Christine received her PhD in Microbiology from the University of California, Berkeley, where her thesis work focused on understanding CRISPR-virus dynamics and interactions in both environmental and industrial systems. She performed post-doctoral research at Stanford University, where her work focused on investigating the role and patterns of the human microbiome during pregnancy. Afterward, she came to Ohio State University to learn more about virus ecology, genomics, and dynamics, working on a variety of systems, including soil and ocean. Christine began working at CoMS 2 years ago, where she has worked on a variety of genomic, metagenomic, and custom projects.

Garrett Smith, PhD

Microbiome Navigator & Data Analyst

CV 

Currently, Garrett is a Data Analyst, helping deliver state-of-the-art analyses of microbial communities with a focus on the identification and interpretation of metabolic capabilities, and Microbiome Navigator, critical for introducing new people to the field of microbiomes, as part of the Microbiome Platform.

Garrett earned his Bachelor’s degree from Iowa State University while studying Microbiology and Genetics, during which he participated in various research projects ranging from shrimp vaccine development and swine vaccine formulation, bacterial fatty acid biosynthesis in the context of developing practical course independent research modules, microbes surviving decontamination of space craft, and maize-associated microbial communities relevant for nitrogen balance.