Otto Cordero

Otto Cordero is an Associate Professor with tenure in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His promotion to this role was effective July 1, 2022. He holds a BSc in Computer Engineering from Escuela Superior Politecnica (Ecuador, 2003), an MSc in Computer Science from the University of Utrecht (2005), and a PhD in Theoretical Biology and Bioinformatics from the University of Utrecht (2009).

Research Focus: Cordero investigates the ecology and evolution of microbial communities, emphasizing how microscale interactions impact ecosystem productivity and evolutionary dynamics. His lab studies marine microbial systems—particularly those decomposing complex organic materials—using integrated computational, genomic, and experimental approaches to understand community assembly principles.

Publication Trends: Cordero's recent work (2016-2023) centers on microbial community dynamics in marine environments. Key themes include metabolic interactions, phage-bacteria relationships, emergence of multicellularity, and ecological succession. His research bridges theoretical models with empirical validation, often leveraging high-throughput sequencing and ecological theory.

Awards:

• 2023 Simons Investigators in Aquatic Microbial Ecology

Lab & Teams: Cordero leads the Cordero Lab at MIT, focusing on microbial communities as distributed metabolic systems. The group develops novel methods to quantify ecological interactions and evolutionary processes in spatially structured environments.