Dr Johanna Winder

Dr Johanna Winder is a bioinformatician with an interest in genomics and machine learning. Her current work focuses on understanding the genetic basis of resistance to psittacine beak and feather disease virus (BFDV) in Mauritius parakeets (Alexandrinus eques) and other species. Johanna completed her PhD at the University of East Anglia in 2025, where she developed machine learning methods to study the diversity and evolution of microbial ice-binding proteins and predict extinction risk from genomic features of simulated populations.
Prior to her PhD, Johanna completed a MSc by Research in the Microbial Biofuels group at the University of Exeter, and a BA (Hons) in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge. During this time, she also studied the effects of climate warming and permafrost thaw on microbial carbon cycling in lakes in northwestern Canada in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Alberta.   

• Machine learning
• Conservation genomics
• Disease resistance
• Metagenomics