Samuel Aroney
Senior Postdoctoral Researcher (Lecturer, Level B) · Centre for Microbiome Research, Queensland University of Technology
School of Biomedical Sciences
Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane, Australia
I am a bioinformatician and metagenomics microbiologist at the Centre for Microbiome Research (QUT), working in the Woodcroft group. I build and apply tools for genome-resolved metagenomics: Bin Chicken (targeted co-assembly), CoverM (read-mapping statistics), Aviary (assembly and recovery) and Galah (genome dereplication), and I contribute to SingleM and its Sandpiper community-profile resource.
Applied to global and climate-focused datasets, this work has:
- identified more than 140,000 previously undescribed bacterial and archaeal species,
- generated community composition profiles for >750,000 public metagenomes,
- recovered genomes from >7,000 species in Arctic permafrost wetlands (NSF EMERGE), and
- supported studies of plastic degradation in insect guts, the Rhizobium–legume symbiosis and chemotaxis in rhizobia.
My earlier training (BSc/Hons, University of Queensland; DPhil, University of Oxford) was in experimental microbiology, focusing on chemotaxis and motility in Rhizobium leguminosarum. I also serve on the QUT School of Biomedical Sciences HDR engagement committee, help administer the Centre’s HPC, and sit on the Microbiome Virtual International Forum (MVIF) Pacific organising committee.
Google Scholar: 1800 citations · h-index 14 · i10-index 15 (as of 2026-11-10; includes merged records)