Dr. Fertig studies the systems-level interactions between genes and cells during cancer development, tumor progression, and therapeutic resistance. Cancer is a devastating disease that hijacks fundamental processes of cellular proliferation, differentiation, and immune evasion to grow uncontrollably. Tumors evolve over time, making it difficult to treat late-stage disease and often develop resistance to treatment. Dr. Fertig believes a systems-level approach spanning molecular and cellular biology is essential to determine the dynamic mechanisms that allow the disease to develop and evade attack.
Dr. Ravel studies the foundational mechanisms of the relationship between the cervicovaginal microbiome and epithelia, particularly in the context of sexually transmitted infections, bacterial vaginosis, and adverse pregnancy outcomes. He has developed a research program focused on applying modern genomics technologies and ecological principles to characterize the role and dynamics of the vaginal microbiome in women’s health. The Ravel Lab uses microbiome clinical studies and systems biology applied to high-dimensional omics data to explore questions that were previously unanswerable in vivo. This research focuses on developing improved treatments to manage gynecological and obstetric conditions.
Dr. White is an internationally recognized expert in bioinformatics with more than 15 years of experience. He leads a team of scientists and engineers at IGS which develop production-level pipelines, databases, and tools for automated and manual analysis of genomic and metagenomic data. Dr. White and his group design socio-technical frameworks that enable large, multi-institutional research collaborations through consensus governance, standardized metadata, and coordinated data processing and sharing. Their work supports robust data ingestion, curation, harmonization, and uniform processing to create broadly accessible multiomic resources. His group also develops visualization and analytical tools, facilitates consortium-wide publications, and expands community access to complex biomedical datasets through outreach and collaboration.
Dr. Giglio has been working in analysis of omics data for more than 25 years. She focuses on metadata harmonization and standardization to facilitate the efficient exchange and reuse of biomedical data. Data standardization makes it possible for researchers to engage in effective data mining and analysis of the enormous quantity of multiomic data that is continuously being produced, leading to hypothesis generation, and discovery of new knowledge. Dr. Giglio has applied her work in data harmonization and standardization to multiple data coordination centers associated with large consortia including the Human Microbiome Project (an NIH Common Fund program) and the Neuroscience Multi-Omic (NeMO) Archive (part of the NIH BRAIN Initiative).
Anup Mahurkar is IGS's Chief Information Officer and the Director of its Informatics Resource Center. He has extensive experience in the field of genomics and health sciences where he has worked as a researcher, engineer, and manager over the past 30 years. During this time, he has overseen the work of scientists, engineers, system administrators, and managers in research environments. His areas of expertise include genome analysis, web-based analysis and visualization tool development, building scalable analysis systems, database design, and high-throughput computing architecture and application development. He leads a team of researchers, engineers, analysts, and IT professionals responsible for production bioinformatics activities, custom bioinformatics analysis, new tool development, and systems engineering. His group also develops visualization tools. He has more than 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals from the group.
Mike is a molecular microbiologist with more than 15 years experience in the application of genomics and next generation sequencing approaches in the fields of microbiome, public health, environmental sciences, and clinical diagnostics. With Jacques Ravel, PhD, Mike established the Microbiome Services Laboratory, a microbiome-focused core resource which is now a component of Maryland Genomics, routinely processing more than 50,000 samples annually for characterization by amplican, metagenome, metatranscriptome, and genome sequencing.
Founding Director, Institute for Genome Sciences
Dean E. Albert Reece Endowed Professor, University of Maryland School of Medicine
Professor, Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine
Professor, Microbiology and Immunology, University of Maryland School of Medicine