Braden Tierney, PhD

Braden Tierney builds experimental and computational tools that leverage large-scale multi-omic microbiome and exposome data to address fundamental questions regarding mechanisms of the ecosystem-microbe interface while also providing paths to microbial biotechnologies, including human therapeutics and environmental probiotics. Generally, his work employs three approaches: 1) Algorithmic development for evolutionary, gene-level analysis of viral and bacterial communities in the context of host disease and exposure, 2) construction, sequencing, and analyzing of massive-scale biobanks comprising diverse, clinical and environmental samples, and 3) tool development for data-driven culturomics of environmental and human microbes. His work focuses on microbial dynamics in diverse ecosystems, including developing gut microbiome architectures as diagnostic biomarkers for diseases such as colorectal cancer, coronary artery disease, and type 2 diabetes, as well as investigating microbiome-immune interactions in spaceflight, wastewater microbiota as tools for tracking public health, and the effects of dietary shifts on microbiome composition and host immune expression. With industry partners, his teams works to translate these findings into applied settings through randomized clinical trials. Finally, he serve as the Executive Director of the Two Frontiers Project (2FP), which, via expeditions around the globe, uses on sequencing, culturing, and biobanking microbes from extreme environments to solve major problems in public and planetary health, with an emphasis on carbon capture, coral reef health, and sustainable agriculture.