Associate Professor Roberto Barrero has joined QUT’s Office of eResearch in the new position of Senior Bioinformatics Solutions Architect.
He brings to the university extensive bioinformatics expertise to contribute to tackling real wold problems in agriculture, plant biosecurity and human health.
Associate Professor Barrero has formal training in molecular biology and developed bioinformatics skills over 15 years working as part of large international collaboration consortia including Human Full-length cDNA Consortium, Rice Genome Annotation Project, International Cattle Tick Genome Sequencing Consortium and the International Barley Genome Consortium.
His work has been published in high impact journals such as Nature, Nucleic Acids Research, Scientific Reports, Genome Research and The Plant Cell.
Most recently, he led a team within the Plant Biosecurity Cooperative Research Centre (PBCRC) to develop a plant diagnostic toolkit that accurately detects all known viruses and viroids in a single test, receiving PBCRC’s Biosecurity Impact Award 2018 in recognition of its impact and benefits to plant industries.
“Associate Professor Barrero has established a career in bioinformatics developing tailored solutions by drawing upon a wealth of domain-specific biological knowledge to address challenges in food security, plant biosecurity, animal health and human diseases,” said QUT Director of eResearch Professor Matt Bellgard.
“We are excited to have him join the QUT team to work closely with our researchers and collaborators to tackle biological challenges of real world significance, translating cutting-edge technical advances into tangible long-term benefits for the broader community.”
ARC Laureate Fellow of Molecular Genetics at QUT Professor Peter Waterhouse also welcomed Associate Professor Barrero’s appointment.
“Genomics and bioinformatics are becoming ever more integral to biological research,” Professor Waterhouse said.
“I am very much looking forward to working with Roberto and the enhancement he will bring to our research.”
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