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SBGrid Team

SBGrid Team

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Piotr Sliz

Piotr Sliz, Ph.D.

Principal Investigator/Group Leader, SBGrid/BioGrids
Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School

Piotr founded SBGrid in 2000 and continues to coordinate all SBGrid and BioGrids activities. He is an associate professor in Pediatrics at Boston Children's Hospital, and in the department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. He is also the Vice President of Research Informatics at Boston Children's Hospital and an Advisor for Research Data Technology Resources and Training at Harvard Medical School. Piotr obtained his Ph.D. degree in X-ray crystallography from University of Toronto where he trained with Emil Pai. After his Ph.D. he worked as an HHMI bioinformatician with Profs. Don Wiley and Stephen Harrison at Harvard University. Find out More »

Giorgos Boutsioukis

Giorgos Boutsioukis

Software Engineer

Giorgos joined SBGrid in 2020 to help maintain the Consortium's website and the SBGrid installation client. He is a Python developer based in Greece and brings with him over 10 years of industry experience in web development and software engineering. Giorgos has a background in computer science and he received his Master's degree from Imperial College London and a BSc from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Sakthyda Corrado

Sakthyda Corrado

Program Coordinator

Sakthyda acts as a key contact for SBGrid member labs, assisting with user management and credential requests and coordinating invoices for annual membership. She provides support to the whole SBGrid team, managing purchases and schedules, organizing events, and keeping everything moving.

Jamaine Davis

Jamaine Davis, Ph.D.

Co-PI - Education and Training

Jamaine is collaborating on projects to expand education and training for historically underserved communities and joined our Advisory Board in 2020. An Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Cancer Biology at Meharry Medical College, Jamaine has a longstanding interest in mentoring the next generation of scientists and is working to create innovative opportunities for researchers to interact with the public to improve communication. Jamaine's research is focused on understanding how cellular components lose their ability to function and describing the precise ways that people who carry genetic mutations develop disease. He completed his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania and postdoctoral training at the National Cancer Institute.

Ben Eisenbraun

Ben Eisenbraun

Cloud Architect

Ben rejoined SBGrid in 2023 to architect a structural biology-focused, workflow-optimized cloud infrastructure. He comes with a truly unique background, most recently working as a DevOps Engineer at Amazon, but also with deep institutional knowledge from 7 years building up SBGrid, curating software and developing relationships with scientists and software developers.

Estrella Fernandez-Gimenez

Estrella Fernandez-Gimenez, Ph.D.

CryoEM Scientist and Software Curator

Estrella joined us in 2024 to support SBGrid member labs in the European region and curate SBGrid's software collections. She works remotely from Madrid, Spain. Her research background is in the development of algorithms for CryoEM image processing. She holds a Ph.D. from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and the Spanish National Center for Biotechnology - CSIC under the direction of Dr. C.O. Sorzano and Prof. J.M. Carazo. She completed her graduate studies in Telecommunications Engineering and Biomedical Engineering and a M.Sc. in Biophysics.

Grisenny Gonzalez

Grisenny Gonzalez

Program Coordinator

Grisenny joined the SBGrid team in 2023. She acts as a key contact for contributing software developers, departmental staff, and collaborating groups and institutions to expand membership services. She provides support to the SBGrid team, content coordination for communications and marketing efforts, organizing events, and other operational logistics. Grisenny comes with a background in hospitality and over 10 years experience in customer service.

Carol Herre

Carol Herre, M.Sc.

Software Release Engineer

Carol compiles and maintains software for the SBGrid/BioGrids collections. She came to us with a background in computer science and has over 10 years of experience in software configuration management and quality assurance. Carol received her Bachelor of Science and Master's degrees in computer science from East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania. Find out More »

Alex Ho

Alex Ho

HPC/Cloud Solutions Expert

Alex joined the SBGrid team in 2022. He works with industry and academic members to identify their technical, functional, and business requirements for computing and contributes to the roadmap for SBGrid's future directions. He comes with a background as a massively parallel computing researcher at Caltech and IBM and a serial entrepreneur with successful VC fundraising experience. Alex also worked as technology lead for nonprofits on digital literacy for three years before joining the team. He graduated from Cornell University with an M.S. degree and studied at Caltech in a Ph.D. program examining oxygen and carbon dioxide transfer at the air-water interface in turbulent mixing environments.

Jason Key

Jason Key, Ph.D.

Associate Director of Technology & Innovation

Jason oversees all technical activities of SBGrid and BioGrids, including software curation and infrastructure development. Prior to joining SBGrid, Jason trained as a postdoctoral fellow with Kevin Garner, at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, and with Profs. Rienk van Grondelle and Klaas Hellingwerf at the University of Amsterdam. He completed his graduate studies in macromolecular crystallography in Prof. Keith Moffat's laboratory at the University of Chicago. Find out More »

Kurt Krause

Kurt Krause, Ph.D.

Co-PI - New Zealand/Australasia Region

Kurtacts as director of SBGrid's Austrailasian outpost at the University of Otago in New Zealand and joined our advisory board in 2020. Dr. Krause completed his medical studies at Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, Texas) and his PhD in the Chemistry Department at Harvard University (Boston, USA). He was an Associate Professor of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and Biochemistry and Chemistry at the University of Houston before moving to New Zealand in 2005 where he is a Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Otago in Dunedin. His research is focussed on the structural biology of infectious diseases and bioluminescence.

Pete Meyer

Pete Meyer, Ph.D.

Sr. Structural Biology Computing Scientist

Pete develops access toin silico docking tools, manages WSMR and DEN computing portals, and contributes as a software curator and release engineer. Pete also acts as chief curator for the SBGrid Data Bank, described in ourNature Communication manuscript, moderating data uptake, developing automated data validation tools, and working on implementation of the Data Locality module that will propagate a subset of SBDB datasets to various supercomputing sites. Dr. Meyer joined the SBGrid team in 2014 after completing his postdoctoral training at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He holds a Ph.D. degree from Cornell University. During his graduate and postdoctoral work, he studied a variety of RNA Polymerase II Transcription Factor Complexes, using and improving methods for studying large complexes with low-resolution x-ray crystallography. He is also an experienced computing programmer and has 10 years of Linux administration experience.

Carol Cruzan Morton

Carol Cruzan Morton.

Science Writer

Carol is an independent science journalist with a background in research communications and has specialized in science-related topics for more than 30 years. She interviews SBGrid/BioGrids members and contributing developers and writes stories for publication on the SBGrid website several times a year.

Thomas Nicholson

Thomas Nicholson, Ph.D.

Research Software Engineer

Thomas joined us in 2022 to support SBGrid member labs in the Australasian region. He works remotely from the SBGrid outpost at University of Otago in New Zealand under the direction of Prof. Kurt Krause. He completed his postgraduate studies at the University of Otago and his research background is in bioinformatics, focusing on the genetics of non-coding RNAs. He is experienced in using and developing software tools and pipelines to carry out statistical analysis in datasets.

Michelle Ottaviano

Michelle Ottaviano

Associate Director of Operations

Michelle manages business operations for SBGrid, leading outreach and communications, developing education initiatives and programs for community engagement and partnerships, budget and financial forecasting, purchasing, and legal compliance.

Eli Riekeberg

Eli Riekeberg

Structural Biology Software Curator

Eli's focus is on curating and compiling SBGrid's software collections, ensuring they meet the dynamic needs of the Structural Biology community. New to SBGrid in 2024, Eli's career has been marked by a commitment to empowering researchers in both academic and industrial settings through the development and implementation of advanced computational tools. He completed his MS in Chemistry at University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Jeff Schwartz

Jeff Schwartz

Linux Systems Administrator

Jeff divides his time between SBGrid Consortium and ARC supporting the Linux infrastructure. Prior to joining SBGrid in 2021, he worked at GlobalFoundries and IBM for over 20 years, supporting a large Linux and AIX environment. Jeff received his BS degree in computer science from Southern Utah University and currently enjoys living in Vermont.

Marlon Victoria

Marlon Victoria

Data Support Specialist

Marlon joined the SBGrid team in 2022 and provides part-time support to SBGrid staff. He has 18 years of IT experience working as a Systems Administrator and Networking Analyst for Boston Children's Hospital.

Fikir Yilma

Fikir Yilma

Systems Administrator

Fikir joined Harvard in 2023 as a systems administrator for operations infrastructure. His time is split between support for the SBGrid team and contributions to the larger community with HMS IT. Fikir completed his B.S. in Information Technology from UMass Boston while working as a Hack Diversity Fellow before joining Rapid7.

Additional Contributors

Dmitry Filonov

Dmitry Filonov

Research Computing Specialist

Dmitry supports off-campus structural biology laboratories as part of SBGrid's Advanced Research Computing (ARC) team. Before joining Dr. Sliz's group in 2017, he worked at Children's Hospital as a System Administrator / Network Analyst. Dmitry brings with him over 10 years of experience managing complex computer networks and file servers, implementing networking services, and providing end-user support.

Justin O'Connor

Justin O'Connor

Sr. System Administrator

Justin manages Linux and OS X server infrastructure, including storage, virtual machines, and networking for the SBGrid Consortium, BioGrids, and as part of the Advanced Research Computing (ARC) team supporting 25 structural biology laboratories in the Boston area. Prior to joining our group in 2013 he worked as a Network and Systems Administrator at the Immune Disease Institute and as a Network Analyst at Boston Children's Hospital.

Franco Paterno

Franco Paterno

Research Computing Systems Professional

Franco joined the Advanced Research Computing (ARC) team in 2023. He triages and prioritizes help desk support requests for SBGrid ARC laboratories and provides first-line support to ARC users on- and off-campus. Franco comes to SBGrid with a strong customer service background, a penchant for building computers, and a Computer Science degree in progress from Wentworth Institute of Technology.

Shaun Rawson

Shaun Rawson, Ph.D.

Electron Microscopy IT Coordinator

Shaun joined SBGrid in 2018 to manage the Harvard Medical School Electron Microscopy Facility and maintain an up-to-date library of electron microscopy research software applications optimized to run on local resources. He came to us after working as a CryoEM Support Scientist at the University of Leeds and completing his PhD on EM as a platform for structure based inhibitor design. Shaun also received a Masters in Chemistry from the University of York.

Jim Vincent, Ph.D.

Bioinformatics Software Specialist

Jim is our resident bioinformatics specialist with a focus on providing bioinformatics software support and curating, configuring, and installing our software collection. Jim worked most recently as the Director of the Bioinformatics Core in the Vermont Genetics Network at the University of Vermont, leading a small team of bioinformatics scientists. His background is in Chemistry and Computer Science with dual BS degrees from the University of Vermont and a PhD in Computational Chemistry from Pennsylvania State University. After completing his postdoc at the National Cancer Institute, where he employed protein modeling techniques to refine the structures of novel cancer drugs, Jim accepted a permanent position at the NCI in the Bioinformatics and Molecular Modeling Section of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology before returning to Vermont.  

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