Earth Sciences Division Staff: Todd Z. Desantis

Biographical Summary

Software Developer in the Molecular Microbial Ecology Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL).  Over the past 11 years he has contributed bioinformatics support to the design of, as well as data analysis for, environmental DNA microarrays.  Currently, he is developing software to design oligonucleotide probe arrays to rapidly detect bacteria and fungi in clinical samples, aerosols, ground water and soils.  Todd also designed and manages Greengenes (http://greengenes.lbl.gov), an international effort to catalog global microbial diversity.  Besides its role as a data storage and organization service, Greengenes provides microbial ecologists with online tools for DNA quality assessment, alignment and classification.  Todd also serves as an analyst for the NIH Human Microbiome Project.

Education

• University of California, Santa Barbara, B.A., Biology - 1992
• CalPoly State University, San Luis Obispo, M.S. Biology - 2000

Professional Experience

• Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Software Developer.  2007-present
• Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Principal Research Associate.  2003-2007
• University of California, Berkeley Extension, Instructor, Perl for Bioinformatics.  2002
• Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, Biomedical Scientist.  2000-2003

Recent Activities

• Developed “Greengenes” 16S rRNA gene database and online tools.
• Microbial Community Analysis-  Human Microbiome Project – Data Analysis and Coordination Center.
• Session convener: “From Black Box to Can of Worms: Advances in Molecular Analysis of Microbial Communities”. American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting December, San Francisco, December 2007.
• Review for journals: FEMS, Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, Environmental Microbiology, Bioinformatics, BMC Microbiology, Nature Methods, Nucleic Acids Research, Environmental Science & Technology

Awards

• Phylochip wins bronze at The Wall Street Journal's 2008 Technology Innovation Awards