Summary
Kate Cooper is a PhD candidate and emerging academic leader who directs a research group investigating informatics links between diet, the microbiome, and disease while advancing reproducibility and bioinformatics education. With eight years of experience and a BS in Bioinformatics plus PhD training in Pathology and Microbiology, she combines hands-on bioinformatics support for local research partners with curriculum and pedagogy innovation—recently securing an NIH R25 grant. Her work bridges consumer health informatics and microbiome research, emphasizing reproducible workflows and data management practices that make complex analyses more accessible and reliable. As an educator-researcher based in Omaha, she cultivates trainee development and collaborative infrastructure across institutions. Colleagues know her for translating computational methods into practical support for wet-lab researchers and for turning educational research into funded programs that scale training impact.
8 years of coding experience
University of Nebraska Medical Center