Ding He

• Presentation
• CV
• Research outputs

I am a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow hosted by Jacobus Boomsma and Guojie Zhang at Centre for Social Evolution, Univeristy of Copenhagen. I obtained my Ph.D at Uppsala University, Sweden in 2014. I am trained as a biologist and bioinformatician with focus on molecular evolution and phylogenomics.

Primary fields of research

Phylogenomics, Bioinformatics, Molecular Evolution, Metagenomics, Microbiome

Current research

My current research focus is ant microbiome. I am leading a sub-project SYMMUNITY (SYMbiosis, Microbiota and immUNITY), funded by European Commission Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (H2020-MSCA-IF-2017, proprosal ID 798017), under the Global Ant Genome Alliance (GAGA) that aims to leverage GAGA consortium sampling effort to profile microbiota across the phylogentic diversity of extant ant species (Formicidae) using 16S amplicon sequencing. Combining readily avaiable 100+ high quality GAGA genomic data, I will further investigate the (co-)evolutionary patterns of ant-microbe symbiosis as well as its genome-wide evolutionary consequence of host (ant) immunity.”

Fields of interest

Besides my main research projects, I am also interested in open science and cloud computing. I joined the eLife Ambassador Program 2019-2020 (https://elifesciences.org/inside-elife/a946c355/elife-community-ambassadors-243-volunteers-join-the-programme-in-2019) that constantly promote open science and better research practices for academic environment. I also joined eLife Innovation Leader Program 2020 (https://elifesciences.org/labs/fdcb6588/innovation-leaders-2020-introducing-the-cohort) where I initiate and led the project "eBioNT: Eco-computing for bioinformatics research" that aims to raise awareness of better knowledge and utilization of public cloud for bioinformatics computing.

In 2020, I joined the metaSUB International Consortium (metasub.org) and assembled a team of scientists to survey the "Urban Biome" of Copenhagen. We collected around 300 swab samples from various "high human interactive surfaces" across 30+ Copenhagen metro stations. The resulting sequencing data and environmental metadata will be used to understand composition and genetic background of microbial community in one of the most used Copenhagen public transit system. Moreover, this data combines with data from other 50+ major cities across five continents will be collaboratively analyzed to better understand the correlations between prevalence and viral/microbial markers in the urban built environment.