Abstract:
The study of prokaryotes using environmental genomics offers unique opportunities to overcome statistical and technical limitations on the study of communities and populations in situ. In this lecture, I will showcase recently introduced bioinformatic tools, statistical techniques, and applications of genomics and metagenomics to the study of environmental adaptations to different environments. I will primarily focus on the microbial response in Pensacola Beach to the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as a model system for the study of succession dynamics and response to disturbance, with additional discussion being presented on freshwater systems and the global distribution of prokaryotic species.

Bio:
Dr. Rodriguez-R is a biologist (BSc) from the National University of Colombia (Bogotá, Colombia), with an MSc in Microbiology from Los Andes University (Bogotá, Colombia), and an MSc in Applied Informatics from the University of Montpellier (Montpellier, France). He obtained his Ph.D. in Bioinformatics from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, USA) with a dissertation on Bioinformatics and Microbial Ecology that received the Sigma Xi award for the best PhD thesis of 2017. After his graduation, Dr. Rodriguez-R served as a postdoctoral fellow in the Georgia Institute of Technology, and later as Research Faculty in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He’s currently an assistant professor appointed at the Department of Microbiology and the Digital Science Center (DiSC) of the University of Innsbruck (Austria). His publication record includes over 80 peer reviewed publications including four published book chapters (about a third as first author), and his work has been cited over 11,000 times with an H-index of 37 (Google Scholar). He has presented multiple workshops, seminars, and symposia on microbiome analysis, ecological studies, and genomics and metagenomics, and serves as a frequent reviewer of multiple international journals. His software production includes dozens of bioinformatic tools and interfaces, distributed and cloud computing, web applications, implementations of novel statistical techniques, and original bioinformatic algorithms, altogether experiencing over 10,000 downloads and online queries per month. Additionally, his work on microbial ecology and evolution has attracted considerable attention, including works in journals such as The ISME Journal, Nature Communications, and Applied and Environmental Microbiology, among others. More recently, his work on prokaryotic genomics related to the Microbial Genomes Atlas (MiGA) has garnered international attention as one of the leading frameworks for the development of genome-based prokaryotic taxonomy. The MiGA framework has also promoted the development of software such as FastANI (3,500 citations) and FastAAI (under development), and public release of multiple genome collections including from freshwater, biogas reactors, and oil-impacted environments. His work on genome-based taxonomy and prokaryotic nomenclature includes publications in venues such as Nature Microbiology, Systematic and Applied Microbiology, and the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology. He was a member of the SeqCode Steering Committee until the formal establishment of the SeqCode Committee (January 2023), in which he now serves as the Chair of the Registry and Nomenclature Working Group, member of the Reconciliation Commission, and Ex Officio Member of the Executive Board.