Our Team and External Collaborators
The Phyloinformatics Lab was inaugurated on August 15, 2022, as part of UNC Charlotte’s CIPHER research center. We are also always happy to discuss further collaborations.
Meet Our Team
Denis Jacob Machado
Assistant Professor
Anastasiia Duchenko
Ph.D. Student
Giovanna Yumi Scorsim Omura
Ph.D. Candidate
Omkar Marne
Ph.D. Student
Reyhaneh Nouri
Ph.D. Candidate
External Collaborators
This list is ordered alphabetically (first name). It does not include collaborators from UNC Charlotte or its CIPHER research center.
Aline Acosta
Adjunct Lecturer
Elton Popp Antunes
Zoologist
Fernando Portella de Luna Marques
Professor
Gabriel Massami Izumi de Freitas
Bioinformaticist
Kary Ocaña
Full Researcher
Larry Antonio Jiménez Ferbans
Associate Professor
Taran Grant
Professor
Vladimir Mashanov
Associate Research Scientist
Alumni
Amariah Robinson
Undergrad Student
Bou Haidara
Master's student and research assistant
Cameron Jones
Undergraduate Student (external)
Cayden Jacobsen
Undergraduate Student
Drashti Mehta
Master's student and lab's intern
Hannah Zeru
Undergraduate Student
Hugo de Paula Oliveira
Master's student (external)
Isha Jain
Master's student
Johannes Schultheis
Master's student (external)
Manish Kota
Undergrad Student (external)
Melissa Sagastume
UNC Charlotte's Undergrad Student
Paula Prieto Oliveira
Postdoctoral Fellow
Philippe Vieira Alves
Postdoctoral Fellow (external)
Prudvi Raj Ragi
Master's Student
Shivam Patel
Master's Student
Tulasi Arla
Master's student
Vedika Judyani
Master's Student
The Phyloinformatics Lab promotes equity, equality, diversity, and inclusion in STEM, other academic fields, and the industry. We strive to be a safe and inclusive workspace by creating a sense of community and providing multiple ways for our team to learn, communicate, succeed, and connect new ideas to goals.
Join
Please see our NEWS section for updated opportunities for students (undergraduate and graduate) and postdocs. Come back later if you do not find a position that interests you now, or contact us to talk about the future.
Funding
National Institutes of Health
Dr. Denis Jacob Machado received a pilot award for the project “A large scale virtual screen of compounds database against viral drug targets” (proposal number: IPF2023-0761, BANNER fund number: 570500, period: 01-May-2023 to 30-Apr-2025, total costs: $462,000 USD).
This is a mentored award submitted in response to a request from the parent award “Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) Centers for Pathogens of Pandemic Concern” (RFA-AI-21-050), by the READDi initiative at UNC Chapel Hill. Dr. Jacob Machado thanks Dr. Daniel A. Janies for acting as the mentor in this award.
Click here to read more about NIH’s Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) centers for pathogens of pandemic concern.
National Science Foundation
- NSF’s REU Site: “Smart and Secure Future Computing” (Project No. 2244424). PI: Heather Richter Lipford.
UNC Charlotte
The Phyloinformatics Lab received different types of support from UNC Charlotte:
- 2023-24 Faculty Research Grant: “New horizons in regenerative medicine through the investigation of genes involved in the modulation of echinoderm mutable connective tissue (MCT)” (Fund. No. 111139). PI: Denis Jacob Machado.
Our lab also benefitted from generous startup funds from UNC Charlotte.
CNPq
On February 2025, our project, ARISE in HPC: Artificial Intelligence for Recombination Identification and Surveillance in Epidemiology in a CAD Environment, has been officially approved for funding under the CNPq/MCTI/FNDCT No. 22/2024 - Programa Conhecimento Brasil.
The grant totals R$ 219,591.00 (R$ 100,000.00 for capital and R$ 119,591.00 for operational costs) and will support international collaboration, including researcher mobility, technical visits, and conference participation. The project will be executed in partnership with the National Laboratory for Scientific Computing (LNCC, Brazil), from December 27, 2024, to December 31, 2026.
FAPESP
Dr. Jacob Machado has maintained over a decade of continuous research funding, including highly competitive grants and a strong record of leading and coordinating multidisciplinary projects supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP; grant numbers 2009/00886-3, 2009/13561-5, 2013/05958-8, and 2015/18654-2). These awards comprise three long-term research projects and a one-year research internship that launched an international collaboration between the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte) and the University of São Paulo (USP) in 2016.
In addition, Dr. Machado served as a bioinformatics collaborator on a four-year research project led by Professor Fernando P. L. Marques (USP), which began in 2018 (FAPESP grant 2018/03534-0). He also contributed to a long-term grant awarded to Professor Taran Grant (USP) by FAPESP (grant 2018/15425-0), which was initiated in July 2019.
