My name is Braden Tierney.
I'm big into bacteria, human health, climate, bioinformatics, and the intersections therein. Also scuba diving, hiking & music.

I'm a scientist studying the data science of microbiology -- how large scale sequencing, computational biology, and microbes can be used jointly to solve problems facing the world. I spend my time running the Two Frontiers Project, an organization dedicated to exploring and leveraging microbial life in extreme environments, and also at Harvard Medical School in their Department of Biomedical Informatics. My work currently spans monitoring pathogen and microbial genomic evolution in space, building bioreactors for carbon capture in space and on Earth, developing algorithms for pathogen classification and monitoring in wastewater, building and testing probiotics to fight coral bleaching, and building methods for optimizing the cultivability of rare microbes.

Prior to all this, I did a a postdoc at Weill Cornell Medical College, a PhD at Harvard Medical School with Chirag Patel and Alex Kostic. Before that, I majored in Biology and Economics at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. During my time there, I worked with Philip Benfey on the development of the Arabidopsis root microbiome, Beth Shank on the soil microbiome, and AgBiome, a company focused on building microbial-based treatments for crop-based diseases.

Outside of science, I spent most of my time playing music, trail running, scuba diving and, at every available opportunity, eating at Waffle Houses.

You can check out my Publication record here, and I highly recommend you stop by the Two Frontiers Project website.