Michael E Sparks

Dr. Sparks is a Computational Biologist with the USDA-ARS Invasive Insect Biocontrol & Behavior Laboratory in Beltsville, MD, USA. He performs biological sequence analysis of urban and agricultural insect pests, with an interest in gene families implicated in xenobiotic detoxification. He also studies various entomopathogenic and/or insecticidal microbial agents with high potential for insect biocontrol, as well as certain insect-vectored, plant-pathogenic microbes. In addition, he has published on such other topics as plant sequence analysis, ruminant metagenomics, epidemiology & biostatistics, and artificial intelligence/ machine learning.