April Cockburn

About me: April completed her Masters at the University of Guelph with Dr. Chris Whitfield in the Department of Molecular and Cellular biology where she focused on capsule assembly in E. coli. She went on to work at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) where she helped sequence cancer genomes using next generation sequencing, mostly focusing on pancreatic and prostate cancers as part of the International Cancer Genome Consortium.

After three years with the OICR she up and moved to beautiful Copenhagen, Denmark where she worked with a Molecular Microbial Ecology Group in the Department of Biology at the University of Copenhagen. It was here she helped finish the very GC rich genome Achromobacter xylosoxidans, which is an opportunistic pathogen that infects immunocompromised patients. Later, she was responsible for developing and optimizing protocols for a large cohort study (COPSAC2010) on asthma and possible associations with the human microbiome. She helped process most of the samples in this study for 16S analysis before heading back to North America. April now spends her days in the Microbiome Lab where she happily helps develop and optimize protocols, troubleshoots tough libraries and makes a variety of different libraries including 16S amplicon, genomic and RNA-seq.

In her spare time, April enjoys spending time with her children, dabbles in photography, sewing, and cooking.

Email: apco@umich.edu