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Erik S. Wright, PhD
- Adjunct Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics
- Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics (Tenured, 2024–2025)
- Senior Faculty, Dept. of Molecular Virology & Microbiology, Baylor College of Medicine (2026–Present)
Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) | University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Biography
Dr. Erik S. Wright is a computational microbiologist and bioinformatician whose research integrates wet and dry lab approaches to study antibiotic resistance. He investigates strategies that naturally antibiotic-producing bacteria have evolved to prevent resistance build-up, and how pathogenic bacteria adapt to antibiotics at minimal fitness cost. Dr. Wright served as Assistant and then tenured Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Pittsburgh (2017–2025) before joining Baylor College of Medicine in 2026. He is the recipient of the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award (2018) and is the primary developer of the widely used DECIPHER bioinformatics toolkit.
Research Interests
Dr. Wright’s laboratory uses comparative genomics, high-throughput computing, experimental evolution, mass spectrometry, and robotics to understand how bacteria manage the evolution of antibiotic resistance in their competitors and within clinical pathogens. He develops open-source bioinformatics tools (the DECIPHER R package) for large-scale sequence analysis, taxonomic classification, and multiple sequence alignment. His translational work mines electronic health records to identify antibiotic pairs and treatment strategies that minimize resistance emergence.
Specialties
- Antibiotic Resistance — Genomics and Evolution
- Comparative Genomics and Microbial Evolution
- Bioinformatics Algorithm Development (DECIPHER toolkit)
- Experimental Evolution and High-Throughput Screening
- Machine Learning Applied to Electronic Health Records
Websites & Links
Education & Training
- B.S., Electrical and Computer EngineeringCornell University, Ithaca, NY2007
- M.S., Civil and Environmental EngineeringUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI2012
- Ph.D., MicrobiologyUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI2016
Awards & Distinctions
- NIH Director's New Innovator AwardNIH2018
Representative Publications
Lakshman AH, Wright ES. EvoWeaver: large-scale prediction of gene functional associations from coevolutionary signals. Nat Commun 16(1):3878, 2025.
Wright ES. Accurately clustering biological sequences in linear time by relatedness sorting. Nat Commun 15(1), 2024.
Blechman SE, Wright ES. Applications of machine learning on electronic health record data to combat antibiotic resistance. J Infect Dis 230(5):1073–1082, 2025.
Beckley AE, Wright ES. Identification of antibiotic pairs that evade concurrent resistance via a retrospective analysis of antimicrobial susceptibility test results. Lancet Microbe 2(10):e545–e554, 2021.
Murali A, Bhargava A, Wright ES. IDTAXA: a novel approach for accurate taxonomic classification of microbiome sequences. Microbiome 6:140, 2018.
Research Grants
| Grant / Funding Agency | Role | Grant Number | Years |
|---|---|---|---|
| Connecting the universe of proteins to address annotation inequality in the microbial proteome NIH/NIAID | PI | 1U01AI176418 | 2023–2026 |
| Fundamentals in Bioinformatics (FunInBio): Expanding Continuing Education Opportunities for Post-Doctoral Scientists NIH/NIAID | PI | 1R25AI191183 | 2025–2030 |
Trainees
| Trainee | Degree Program / Role & Years |
|---|---|
| Aidan Lakshman | PhD Student, University of Pittsburgh | 2021–2025 |
| Nishant Panicker | PhD Student, University of Pittsburgh | 2021–Present |
| Shu-Ting Cho | PhD Student, University of Pittsburgh | 2021–Present |
| Samuel Blechman | MS Student, University of Pittsburgh | 2022–2025 |