Erick Cardenas Poire

Experience

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  Instituto del Mar del Perú

  Jan 2001 - Apr 2001

  Summer Research Student
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  Michigan State University

  Aug 2003 - Dec 2011

  During this period I was involved in two major projects. For the first project, I characterized a large strain collection of Burkholderia cenocepacia, a human opportunistic pathogen. The second project involved characterization of soil microbial communities under a biofuel crop under the umbrella of the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center. The highlights for this period were:• Largest comparative genomic analysis for B. cenocepacia. • Creation of a large genomic database of soil microorganism. Publically released. Show less I did my doctoral studies in the CME, one of the most prestigious research centers in microbial ecology in the world. As a graduate student, I was involved in a uranium bioremediation project in collaboration with researchers from US Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Stanford University. During this period, I also did research translation work for the Ribosomal Database Project, one of the most frequently used tools in microbiological research. At the RDP, I worked in improving the user experience, created video tutorials, and other resources in order to increase the adoption of this research tool.The highlights of this period includes:• Big collaborative project with environmental engineers, biologists, and chemists.• Integrated chemical, and hydrology data with biological data derived from massive sequencing technologies using novel statistical analysis.• First article in the area that used novel massive sequencing data• Creation of video tutorials for the RDP. I created scripts, recorded, and produced the tutorials.• Created teacher resources to promote the use of the RDP as an education tool.• Participated in two highly cited RDP publications (over 4000 citations). Show less

  • Visiting Research Associate

    Jan 2009 - Dec 2011

  • Graduate Research Assisstant

    Aug 2003 - Dec 2008
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  The University of British Columbia

  Jan 2012 - Dec 2016

  Postdoctoral Fellow

  During this period I worked on a large-scale Genome Canada funded project ($8 million) that focused on the understanding the role of lignin degradation enzymes in order to create bio-products from forest biomass. My contributions have helped this project in:• Analysis of large datasets (1.2 Tbp) using state of the art bioinformatics tools.• Characterization of genetic potential for carbon and nitrogen cycle of 107 metagenomes.• Data mining for novel enzymes involved in degradation of lignin, and steroids.• Contributed to publications in high impact journals in the area of microbial ecology.• Implementation of standards in computational biology to achieve reproducible research.• Collaborated with researchers from the British Columbia Ministry of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resources Operations; Great Lakes Forestry Centre; and US Forest Service. As a senior member of the lab, I also contributed to reports for Genome Canada, and in training and supporting other lab members in Bioinformatics, and statistical modeling. Show less

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  Microbiome Insights Inc.

  Jan 2017 - now

  Senior Director, Bioinformatics and Gut Health Program Manager

  I work at Microbiome insights developing analysis pipelines and algorithms that help us understand the role of the microbiome in human health. I also provide bioinformatics support for our team.