National Microbiome Data Collaborative National Microbiome Data Collaborative

NMDC Champions

NMDC Champions understand and appreciate the value of well-curated data, and are willing to advocate for the importance of FAIR microbiome data.

Featured NMDC Champions

I became a NMDC Champion to promote the FAIR microbiome data initiative which allows for more collaboration and increased reusability of data to answer outstanding scientific questions.
Marie Kroeger
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Chick-Keller Postdoctoral Fellow

Marie is a microbial ecologist and physiologist working as a Chick-Keller Postdoctoral Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory where she is investigating the role of microbial community composition on litter decomposition in the DOE funded Terrestrial Microbial Carbon Cycling Scientific Focus Area. She obtained her PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in Dr. Klaus Nüsslein’s laboratory where she studied the effect of Amazon deforestation on microbial carbon and methane cycling. Marie’s research interests are focused on leveraging microorganisms to overcome human-caused problems such as soil erosion and climate change.

I became a NMDC Champion to promote applied, practical applications of environmental microbial ecology. We need to develop a reliable framework for data standards, which is an an important and timely task.
Alex Honeyman
Colorado School of Mines, NSF Graduate Research Fellow

Alex is currently a Ph.D. student in Environmental Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. He became interested in environmental science as a firefighter-EMT in Colorado, and wondered, “What happens to soil now that the fire is over?” Alex’s main dissertation work investigates the microbial ecology and geochemistry of soil recovery after wildfire, and specifically explores what a recovery trajectory looks like and whether it is predictable.

I want to become an NMDC champion to contribute towards the generation of a centralized and an easily accessible repository for metagenomic and multi-omics datasets that would open new avenues of exploratory biological research.
Venkat Subramanian
National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Sr. Research Scientist

Venkat is a senior research scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) developing microbial consortia from wet waste for bioproduct synthesis. He obtained his Ph.D in molecular biology and biotechnology from the University of Cincinnati, followed by postdoctoral work at NREL and the Colorado School of Mines. His work has focused on applying omics approaches on algal and fungal systems towards biofuels and bioproducts synthesis applications. His other research interests include fungal-mediated enzyme production and plastic recycling.

Active NMDC Champions

Interested in becoming an NMDC Champion?
Read up on what it means to be an NMDC Champion on our Community page. Then, fill out our NMDC Champion application.
Yigal Achmon (Guangdong Israel Institute of Technology)
Assistant Professor
I want to improve the scientific findings, reproducibility, and collaborative efforts among peers. I also want to help create community and to learn.
Kai Blumberg (UA)
"I became an NMDC champion for because I want to participate in the creation of a unified and interoperable semantic layer which can be used to join data from different scientific disciplines. As an early career scientist, I'm very excited to potentially play a role in enabling scientists to unify our knowledge and data to better address global scale environmental challenges."
Jenny Bratburd (UW Madison)
PhD Candidate
“I am excited about the potential for microbiome research to improve human health, and I believe we need to improve rigor and reproducibility to achieve that potential.”
John-Marc Chandonia (LBNL)
"I became an NMDC Champion because I am interested in collaborating to develop new technologies for managing data. I am particularly interested in solving long-standing challenges in making data truly interoperable and reusable."
Sean Cleveland (University of Hawai'i)
Cyberinfrastructure Research Scientist
I want to be a part of the process for defining FAIR standards and integrations, as this data is important and expensive to acquire and therefore should be responsibly managed. The need for standards and methods for integration is essential.
Joan Damerow (LBNL)
Postdoctoral Fellow
I became an NMDC champion because I want to work together toward a culture of open and multi-disciplinary science--enabling global search and integration of microbiomes with associated environmental data now and in the future.
Justine Debelius (Karolinska Institutet)
Postdoctoral Researcher
Science relies on our ability to replicate data. Transparency in data science requires access to the same datasets. Meta analysis requires access to consistent datasets. I'd like to help shape the future of microbiome metadata and find a way to make data more accessible.
Bill Duncan (LBNL)
"I became an NMDC champion because of the great need to develop systems that bring together data from multiple microbiome data repositories. The development of these systems is a truly exciting opportunity to advance an emerging branch of science."
JP Dundore-Arias (California State University, Monterey Bay)
Assistant Professor
"I became an NMDC Champion because I am excited to be part of this collaborative community developing efforts to increase awareness, access and engagement in the microbiome research community."
Cassie Ettinger (University of California, Riverside)
Postdoctoral Researcher
I would like to be an advocate to the community for reproducible workflows, open code and do more than just lead by example, but work to educate others on these topics.
Alexis Garretson (George Mason University)
Graduate Research Fellow
"I hope as an NMDC Champion I can apply my knowledge of data rescue, scientific gateways, and data integration efforts to support the ongoing work of NMDC and advocate for FAIR microbiome data."
Sean Gibbons (ISB)
"I became an NMDC Champion because I believe that access to usable public data and metadata is a right and not a privilege."
Judson Hervey (U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL))
Research Biologist
I became an NMDC champion to promote consistent metadata, data acquisition standards, and data analysis workflows from the metagenome community to other meta*omics studies, researchers, and communities.
Alex Honeyman (Colorado School of Mines)
NSF Graduate Research Fellow
I became a NMDC Champion to promote applied, practical applications of environmental microbial ecology. We need to develop a reliable framework for data standards, which is an an important and timely task.
Bonnie Hurwitz (University of Arizona)
Associate Professor
Beautifully harmonized metadata is like a love letter to the future. NMDC is the global community and service making sure these letters get delivered!
Ulas Karaoz (LBNL)
"I became an NMDC Champion because as microbiome science shifts from data generation to interpretation, FAIR data is critical to enable integration of global datasets."
Marie Kroeger (Los Alamos National Laboratory)
Chick-Keller Postdoctoral Fellow
I became a NMDC Champion to promote the FAIR microbiome data initiative which allows for more collaboration and increased reusability of data to answer outstanding scientific questions.
Nancy Merino (LLNL)
Postdoctoral Researcher

FAIR microbiome data is necessary to support collaborations and future research analyses. It is important to assess the data quality and connect the metadata, including sample processing and data creation/analyses steps. I became a NMDC champion to help test workflows and make microbiome data FAIR.

Ahmed Shibl (New York University Abu Dhabi)
Research Associate
As an NMDC Champion, I will seek to connect and engage with microbiome researchers to tackle local and regional infrastructure challenges. I believe it is time for the microbiome community to push for an adaptable system that supports metadata curation, shared ownership of data, and seamless cross-study partnerships. I also hope to further give the FAIR Microbiome IN an international presence, allowing us to meet the NMDC objective of becoming a community-driven, integrative data science ecosystem.
Luke Thompson (NOAA)
"I am excited to be an NMDC Champion because our community has a special opportunity to make our data more reusable -- empowering scientists, citizens, and governments to use this data for research, medicine, conservation, and restoration."
Alonna Wright ( UC Davis)
PhD Candidate
“I believe microbiome data helps us better understand our world and our health. Making this data more accessible and adherent to FAIR data practices would provide opportunities for meaningful analyses that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.”
Ying Zhang (University of Rhode Island)
Associate Professor
I see from my own work the importance of benchmarking diverse approaches and making sure data obtained from different studies are standardized for comparison. I want to work with scientists of the same interests to help promote the production and documentation of high quality data.
Venkat Subramanian (National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
Sr. Research Scientist
I want to become an NMDC champion to contribute towards the generation of a centralized and an easily accessible repository for metagenomic and multi-omics datasets that would open new avenues of exploratory biological research.

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