On a mission to revolutionize microbiome discovery

Kevin is a skilled STEM commercialization leader with more than eight years’ experience in the healthcare space. Prior to joining BiomeSense, Kevin provided strategic and operational leadership as the Director of Operations for a seed-stage pharmacogenomics spinoff from the University of Chicago.

Jack is a global leader in microbiome research,co-founding both the Earth Microbiome Project and American Gut Project. He has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters on ecosystem ecology and is the founding editor-in-chief of mSystems, a journal of the American Society of Microbiology.

Dylan is an experienced biomedical engineerwith over 7 years’ experience in product development encompassing a variety of disciplines, including microfluidics, medical devices, and the microbiome. Prior to joining BiomeSense, he helped support and launch Augmenix’s flagship implantable hydrogel product that saw them acquired by Boston Scientificin 2018.

Yoshiki Vázquez-Baeza leads the computational biology and data engineering work at BiomeSense. In his prior role he acted as the Associate Director of Bioinformatics with the Center for Microbiome Innovation at UC San Diego. Yoshiki has a breadth of experience developing open source statistical analysis and visualization tools for microbiome research. Throughout his career he's authored a number of high impact papers on the human microbiome spanning inflammatory bowel diseases, time-series analysis, fecal transplants, cystic fibrosis, population-scale profiling, and microbiome analysis.

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Yoshiki has over 10 years of experience in biomedical engineering, computer science and microbiome research, holds a BS in Biomedical Engineering from Universidad Iberoamericana, an MS in Computer Science (Human Computer Interaction) and PhD in Computer Science from UC San Diego.

Nikhil Boddu is the Mechatronics engineer at BiomeSense, providing expertise in electrical control system engineering. At BiomeSense, Nikhil uses his skills to provide support for the mechanical design and help develop required automation needs for the system. He holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Mechatronics Engineering from the University of Waterloo.

Madison Tuffield is a Research Associate at BiomeSense, developing and validating experimental protocols to support development of the company’s technology. Her previous research experience includes generating and analyzing sequence data to create updated phylogenies of under-researched organisms. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Biology from Macalester College.

Omar Khan is a Research Associate at BiomeSense, where he develops experimental protocols and engineers the product workflow to accelerate the development of cutting-edge microbiome technology. Previously, he worked on expressing and assaying computationally generated protein libraries to ascertain functionality. Omar holds Bachelor's degrees in Chemistry and Biology from Indiana University.

David is a Scientist leading metatranscriptomic efforts at BiomeSense, providing expertise in RNA biology and next-generation sequencing. David has authored several publications in the field of RNA biology, uncovering gene-regulatory networks that bacteria use to sense their environment. David holds a BS in Biology from Hampden-Sydney College and a PhD in Biological Sciences from Northwestern University.

Rob Knight, Ph.D., is a recognized global leader in microbiome research and a dynamic force behind several significant research initiatives. The Knight lab has produced many of the software tools and laboratory techniques that enabled high-throughput microbiome science. This includes the QIIME pipeline, an open-source bioinformatics and data analysis program that has been used by thousands of microbiome studies.

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Rob, along with BiomeSense co-founder Jack Gilbert, also helped co-found the American Gut Project, one of the world’s largest crowdfunded and crowdsourced scientific research projects exploring links between the human gut and diet, health, lifestyle, exercise, and more.

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Beyond these projects, Rob has authored or co-authored numerous articles, given a TED Talk viewed by almost 2 million people, and published multiple books to translate the science of the microbiome to a broad audience. Last fall, he received the NIH’s prestigious Pioneer Award to support his research into developing new approaches to enhance healthy microbiomes.

Charles Chiu, MD, Ph.D., is a pioneer in using metagenomic analysis for diagnostic and clinical research. An infectious disease physician and microbiologist, he leads a translational research laboratory that has successfully identified and characterized emerging viral pathogens. Charles and his lab have also led the way in discovering new approaches to applying bioinformatics and genomic technologies for clinical and public health applications.

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Charles currently leads the Precision Diagnosis of Acute Infectious Diseases study. Its goal is to make metagenomic next-generation sequencing for pathogen detection clinically available for the first time. Charles has been interviewed by several media outlets regarding the coronavirus, including a recent article for Time magazine.

Savas Tay is a bioengineer and systems biologist. He has been a pioneer in developing single cell analysis methods and using them to study inflammatory signaling pathways. Dr. Tay has developed several microfluidic and optical technologies for high throughput analysis of biological systems, and authored over 65 peer-reviewed publications.