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 (he/him)
Assistant Professor
Paula Prieto Oliveira (she/her)
Postdoctoral Fellow
Giovanna Yumi Scorsim Omura
Ph.D. student and research assistant
Omkar Marne (he/him)
Ph.D. student and teaching assistant
Reyhaneh Nouri (she/her)
Ph.D. student and research assistant
Hugo de Paula Oliveira (he/him)
Master's student (external)
Johannes Schultheis (he/him)
Master's student (external)
Prudvi Raj Ragi
Master's Student
Shivam Patel
Master's Student
Vedika Judyani
Master's Student
External Collaborators
This list is ordered alphabetically (first name). It does not include collaborators from UNC Charlotte or its CIPHER research center.
Aline Acosta (she/her)
Adjunct Lecturer
Elton Popp Antunes (he/him)
Zoologist
Fernando Portella de Luna Marques (he/him)
Professor
Gabriel Massami Izumi de Freitas (he/him)
Bioinformaticist
Kary Ocaña (she/her)
Full Researcher
Larry Antonio Jiménez Ferbans (he/him)
Associate Professor
Taran Grant (he/him)
Professor
Vladimir Mashanov (he/him)
Associate Research Scientist
Alumni
Amariah Robinson
Undergrad Student
Anastasiia Duchenko (she/her)
Ph.D. student
Bou Haidara (he/him)
Master's student and research assistant
Cameron Jones (he/him)
Undergraduate Student (external)
Drashti Mehta (she/her)
Master's student and lab's intern
Hannah Zeru (she/her)
Undergraduate Student
Isha Jain
Master's student
Manish Kota (he/him)
Undergrad Student (external)
Melissa Sagastume (she/her)
UNC Charlotte's Undergrad Student
Philippe Vieira Alves (he/him)
Postdoctoral Fellow (external)
Tulasi Arla
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.
FAPESP
Dr. Jacob Machado has accumulated 10+ years of uninterrupted research funding, including highly competitive awards and an extensive track record of developing and organizing multidisciplinary research projects from São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP, file nos. 2009/00886-3, 2009/13561-5, 2013/05958-8, and 2015/18654-2). These include three long-term projects and a one-year internship that initiated an international collaboration involving the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte) and USP in 2016. Furthermore, I Dr. Jacob Machado has been a bioinformatics collaborator of Professor Fernando P. L. Marques (USP) on a four-year project since 2018 (FAPESP, file no. 2018/03534-0). Finally, he collaborated on a long-term grant awarded to Professor Taran Grant (USP) by FAPESP (file no. 2018/15425-0), initiated in July 2019.
