Bradley Weiler
Postdoctoral Researcher, Coral Program
CIMAS/NOAA/Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory
bweiler@earth.miami.edu
Dr. Bradley Weiler is a postdoctoral researcher at CIMAS with expertise in marine molecular ecology and bioinformatics. He studies how disease and microbial dysbiosis develop in reef-building corals, which function as integrated holobionts and host diverse bacterial and microeukaryotic communities. Dr. Weiler combines field sampling with multi-omics analyses to characterize coral disease at the molecular level, integrating host and Symbiodiniaceae transcriptomics with microbial 16S/18S rRNA metabarcoding. His work is supported in part by the University of Miami’s Frost Institute for Data Science and Computing and leverages high-performance computing resources to fit and interpret complex models across large, multi-layer datasets. A distinctive branch of his research uses protein language models to improve functional inference in non-model organisms, where sparse reference genomes and incomplete annotations can limit biological insight. By combining “protein-embedding”-based prediction with comparative genomics, he expands the set of interpretable host and microbial proteins and highlights candidate pathways (such as immune signaling, stress response, and tissue remodeling) that may shape coral disease susceptibility and progression. Beyond discovery, he is developing biomarker candidates for field-ready diagnostics and welcomes collaborations to validate markers and prototype rapid assays for reef monitoring.
