I am a multi-disciplinary scientist, with experience in computing, bioinformatics and mathematics.  I enjoy developing algorithms to address complex problems in novel ways as well as analysing multi-omics data to make interesting biological discoveries. My current interests lie in the area of the evolution of antibiotic resistance as well as development and improvement of methods to analyse microbiome data.

I have previously worked on the development and implementation of algorithms and pipelines for constructing and comparing gene regulatory networks for a range of cichlid species in order to uncover underlying mechanisms behind the great radiations of adaptive evolution in the East African lake species. In another project I designed approaches for the integration of multi-omic data in collaboration with the University of East Anglia Medical School to investigate the connection between individual flavonoid metabolism, microbiome, genetic factors and nutrition.

Additionally, I have an interest in Phylogenetics, in particular in the development of algorithms for the construction of phylogenetic networks from sequence and distance data. In this context I developed an extendible software suite comprising different tools, data structures and algorithms.

Key Publications

S. Bastkowski, D. Mapleson, A. Spillner, T. Wu, V. Moulton (2017) Spectre: a Suite of PhylogEnetiC Tools for Reticulate Evolution. Bioinformatics 34(6): 1056–1057. https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btx740

P. Sierocinski, K. Milferstedt, F. Bayer, T. Großkopf, M. Alston, S. Bastkowski, D. Swarbreck, P. J Hobbs, O. S Soyer, J. Hamelin, A. Buckling (2017) The most efficient microbial community dominates during community coalescence. Current Biology 27(21): 3390-3395. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2017.09.056

C. Fishwick, J. Higgins, L. Percival-Alwyn, A. Hustler, J. Pearson, S. Bastkowski, S. Moxon, D. Swarbreck, C. Greenman, J. Southgate (2017) Heterarchy of Transcription Factors Driving Basal and Luminal Cell Phenotypes in Human Urothelium. Cell Death and Differentiation 24(5): 809-818. https://doi.org/10.1038/cdd.2017.10