Staff

Piotr Sliz, Ph.D.

Principal Investigator/Director, 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 Director of Research Information, Technology, and Services 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 »

Jason Key, Ph.D.

Associate Director of Technology & Innovation
XSEDE Campus Champion for SBGrid

Jason oversees all technical activities of SBGrid and BioGrids, including software curation and infrastructure development. He acts as the XSEDE Campus Champion for SBGrid/BioGrids and collaborates with members of the consortium on research projects. 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 »

Michelle Ottaviano

Assistant Director of Operations

Michelle manages business operations and communications for SBGrid. She acts as the primary point of contact for membership inquiries and software licensing and coordinates financial and legal contracts. Michelle also leads outreach and education initiatives, organizing SBGrid's computing workshops and monthly webinar series, writing newsletters, and developing website content.   

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 »

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.  

Pete Meyer, Ph.D.

Sr. Structural Biology Computing Scientist

Pete develops access to in 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 our Nature 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.   

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.  

Kurt Krause, Ph.D.

Outpost Director

Kurt acts 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.   

Sakthyda Corrado

Jr. Relationship Associate

Sakthyda supports SBGrid members and developers with billing, licensing, and user management. She maintains our social media presence, assists with webinar and workshop management, and provides support to the whole SBGrid team, managing schedules, organizing events, and keeping everything moving.   

Jeff Schwartz

Linux Systems Administrator

Jeff supports the Linux infrastructure for the SBGrid Consortium and Advanced Research Computing team. 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.   

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

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.   

Paul Fricker

IT Project Manager

Paul is the project manager for the Advanced Research Computing team and joined SBGrid in 2021. He triages and prioritizes support requests for SBGrid ARC labs, coordinates ARC help desk support functions, and resolves routine support requests. Paul has a bachelor’s degree in physics and is a Certified Scrum Master.   

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.   

Carol Cruzan Morton

Science Writer

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