Email

isabel.fernandezescapa@bcm.edu

Positions

Assistant Professor

Molecular Virology & Microbiology
KLemon Lab
Baylor College of Medicine
Houston, Texas United States

Education

PhD from Universidad Complutense de Madrid

05/2012 - Madrid, Madrid Spain

BSc from Universidad de León

06/2006 - León, León Spain

Postdoctoral Training at The Forsyth Institute

12/2017 - Cambridge, Massachusetts United States

Professional Interests

• Human Nasal Microbiome
• Microbe-Microbe Interactions
• Bioinformatics

Professional Statement

My passions are problem-solving, efficiently and consistently devising innovative solutions, and implementing streamlined workflows. I have a collaborative mindset and extensive experience working closely with students, technologist, lead scientists, software developers and product managers. I highly value mentorship and fostering a culture of integrity, transparency, and reproducibility in scientific endeavors. I am driven by a profound commitment to collaborative and open science, constantly seeking opportunities to adapt, improve, and develop tools and resources that enable teams to advance in the understanding of microbial communities and contribute to scientific progress.
As Bioinformatics Manager in the KLemon Lab, my focus is to design, develop, and validate bioinformatic pipelines and data management solutions to support efficient processes and facilitate impactful research on the human nasal microbiome. With a multidisciplinary background in microbiology, I possess a deep understanding of bacterial physiology and specialized knowledge of microbial communities associated with the human nasal passages. My practical experience spans the wet lab, where I have conducted research in bacterial genetics and microbial physiology, while also excelling in NGS bioinformatics analysis and data science solutions for microbiome research.

Websites

Videos

Selected Publications

• Isabel F. Escapa, Yanmei Huang, Tsute Chen, Maoxuan Lin, Alexis Kokaras, Floyd E Dewhirst, Katherine P Lemon "Construction of habitat-specific training sets to achieve species-level assignment in 16S rRNA gene datasets." Microbiome. 2020 May 15;8(1):1-16. Pubmed PMID: 32414415
• Isabel F. Escapa, Tsute Chen, Yanmei Huang, Prasad Gajare, Floyd E. Dewhirst, Katherine P. Lemon "New Insights into Human Nostril Microbiome from the Expanded Human Oral Microbiome Database (eHOMD): a Resource for the Microbiome of the Human Aerodigestive Tract." mSystems. 2018 Dec 4;3(6):e00187-18. Pubmed PMID: 30534599
• Brugger SD, Eslami SM, Pettigrew MM, Escapa IF, Henke MT, Kong Y, Lemon KP. "Dolosigranulum pigrum Cooperation and Competition in Human Nasal Microbiota." mSphere. 2020 Sep 9;5(5):e00852-20. Pubmed PMID: 32907957
• Flores Ramos S, Brugger SD, Escapa IF, Skeete CA, Cotton SL, Eslami SM, Gao W, Bomar L, Tran TH, Jones DS, Minot S, Roberts RJ, Johnston CD, Lemon KP. "Genomic Stability and Genetic Defense Systems in Dolosigranulum pigrum, a Candidate Beneficial Bacterium from the Human Microbiome." mSystems. 2021 Oct 26;00425-21. Pubmed PMID: 34546072