Assistant Professor
B.S.: Macquarie University
M.S.: Victoria University
PhD.: University of Adelaide
(203) 623-9979
Research Interests:
Professor Sistrom works broadly across a number of bacterial and viral systems to explore evolutionary hypotheses using high throughput sequencing and bioinformatics methods. In particular, he is interested in:
- How microbial populations change over space and time.
- What selective pressures lead to emergent disease.
- How the evolutionary properties of microbes can be exploited to manage or eliminate disease.
He is interested in collaborative projects that look at pertinent evolutionary questions in a range of biological systems using big data approaches.
Primary Research Interest:
Immunity & Infectious Diseases
School:
School of Natural Sciences
Bylaw 55 Unit:
Life and Environmental Sciences
Recent Success:
2017 Hellman Fellowship
2017 Mexus Award
2016 JGI CSP Grant
2016 UC Merced Faculty Research Award
2016 JGI Director’s Grant
Community Affiliations:
Society for the Study of Evolution
Society of Systematic Biologists
Graduate Courses:
Evolutionary Dynamics
Undergraduate Courses:
Genetics, Evolutionary Medicine
Graduate Student Research:
Microbial symbioses and venom production
Antibiotic resistance evolution and transfer
Current Graduate Students:
2
Past Research Topics:
Molecular ecology
Phylogenetics
Comparative genomics of trypanosomes
Area Of Expertise:
Genomics
Comparative genomics
High throughput sequencing
Evolutionary biology
Antibiotic resistance
Microbiomes
Field of Study:
Bioinformatics and Genomics
Year Joined UC Merced:
2015
Post Doc School:
Yale University
Hometown:
Sydney, Australia
Current Funding Needs:
Funding to support research staff and generate sequence data for antimicrobial resistance studies.
Current Research Focus:
Understanding the evolutionary processes which drive the emergence of antibiotic resistant pathogens and develop new strategies to combat them:
- Examining how microbes evolve over time and space using a broad range of organismal systems, with a focus on microbiome studies, multi-drug resistant bacteria and RNA viruses. Utilizing high throughput genetic sequencing to provide genomic scale data, which is then analyzed to test developed hypotheses.