Braden T Tierney

Dr. Braden Tierney is a jointly appointed postdoctoral fellow across the labs of Dr. Christopher Mason, Dr. George Church, and Seed Health, where he manages some of their early-stage R&D and probiotic clinical trials. He is additionally the Director of Informatics for the MetaSUB consortium, which spans 30 countries and is, among other things, leading COVID-19 wastewater tracking efforts globally, as well as the Co-Chair of NASA’s Microbial Analysis Working Group, which develops standards and methods for studying the use of microbes in and their adaptation to space travel. His recent research sits at the intersection of machine learning, microbiology, and human health, studying how artificial intelligence can be used to enhance our ability to build next-generation microbial therapeutics, diagnostics for both human disease and environmental outcomes, like treating coral disease, carbon capture, and bioremediating plastics. His work has resulted in the discovery of athletic-performance-enhancing bacteria to ancient, extinct beneficial microbes from hunter-gatherers alive thousands of years ago. Prior to his PhD, he worked in the agriculture industry on the discovery and development of organic, microbial-based biopesticides to fight crop disease as well as biostimulants. He additionally developed tools for visualizing the structure and function of the human oral microbiome. Dr. Tierney completed his undergraduate study with joint degrees in Economics and Biology from Duke University.