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Biography

Srijak Bhatnagar is an Assistant Professor, Computational Biology and Microbial Ecology at Athabasca University. He also holds the position of Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the Áù¾ÅÉ«ÌÃ. His research lies at the intersection of Microbiology and Bioinformatics, leveraging microbial insights to understand and remediate the impact of humans on the environment. His research group uses DNA sequencing technologies to study the ecophysiology of microbial communities from various environments, such as the microplastic contamination in Alberta's watershed, forestry and mining-affected boreal and prarire soils, and oil spills in the the Arctic Ocean.

He is a strong proponent of Open Science and is passionate about science outreach and communication. He is a member of Science Outreach Athabasca and a Research Associate at the Arctic Institute of North America. 

Srijak received his PhD in Microbiology (2017) from the University of California Davis (Eisen Lab) and MS in Bioinformatics (2007) from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Weitz Group) 
He also worked as a Bioinformatics Engineer at UC Davis Genome Center (2008-2011) and as a postdoctoral researcher (2017-2021) at the Áù¾ÅÉ«ÌÃ.