Researches the genetic and metabolic diversity of our ecosystem
Achievements

Researches the genetic and metabolic diversity of our ecosystem

Kostas Konstantinidis is a Principal Investigator and a Professor in the Environmental Engineering department at Georgia Institute of Technology.

He joined the Georgia Institute of Technology as an Assistant Professor in November 2007. He received his BS in Agriculture Sciences from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece) in 1999.

He continued his studies at the Center for Microbial Ecology at Michigan State University (East Lansing, MI) under the supervision of Prof. James M. Tiedje, where he obtained a PhD in 2004. His PhD studies were fully supported by the Bouyoukos Fellowship program and were devoted in advancing our understanding of the ecology and physiology of soil bacteria through the comparative analysis of their whole-genome sequences. This research resulted in a NSF-funded project to advance the species definition for prokaryotes, which also fostered a short post-doc position at the Center for Microbial Ecology.

He then moved to MIT and the laboratory of Prof. Edward DeLong to get trained on innovating metagenomic techniques. His work at MIT provided important new insights into the complexity and function of oceanic microbial communities as well as how life is adapting in the deep and cold Oceans. His research interests are at the interface of genomics and computational biology in the context of microbial ecology with the overarching goal to broaden understanding of the genetic and metabolic potential of the microbial world. He is also interested in the biotechnological applications of microbial diversity in the bioremediation of environmental pollutants and the assessment of water quality.

Advancing our knowledge on these issues is essential for a better understanding of the microbes that power, by and large, the biogeochemical cycles that sustain life on Earth and cause or control important diseases in humans and animals.

He has published more than 80 peer-reviewed articles and 6 book chapters in these research areas, which have received in excess of 6,000 citations (Google Scholar). Dr. Konstantinidis has received several national and international distinctions and awards for his work, including the 2010 International Skerman Award of the World Federation for Culture Collections (www.wfcc.info) and the 2012 Sigma Xi Young Faculty Research Award. He holds the Carlton S. Wilder Junior Chair in Environmental Engineering since September 2012 and is a Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow since 2014.

He is also a member of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), the International Society for Microbial Ecology (ISME) and the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP) and the editorial board of the journal of Applied and Environmental Microbiology and the journal of Environmental Microbiology.

LEAVE YOUR COMMENT