Our Team

Dr. Cano also holds the title of Professor Emeritus at the Biological Sciences Department, California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo.  He also serves as Chief Scientific Officer for the BioCollective, a microbiome company based in Denver, CO.

 

As the former Executive Director of Research at the ATCC Center for Translational Microbiology Dr. Cano led a team of scientists in the development of a new generation of microbiome reference standards. Additionally, Dr. Cano is the founder and former Director of the Environmental Biotechnology Institute (EBI), a firm that specializes in environmental microbial forensics and remediation. Dr. Cano is best known for his groundbreaking work in Paleomicrobiology, with extensive experience in microbial ecology, and molecular and cellular microbiology.

 

This passion led to his role as the founding Scientist and Vice President of the Ambergene Corporation, where he isolated and characterized more that 1,200 ancient microorganisms from amber. This work has led to patented material on how to derive ancient bacteria from amber inclusions, deep sea cores and other environments harboring ancient microorganisms, in addition to the exploration of petroleum production fields using microbial community analysis. 

 

Dr. Cano earned his Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Montana, which compliments his additional degrees in Genetics and Clinical Microbiology. During his extensive tenure teaching at Cal Poly, he received more than a dozen awards, including the prestigious Carski Award.

 

He also wrote and published a number of textbooks and laboratory procedures manuals as well as more that 40 peer-reviewed publications. He has served as scientific consultant to several Biotechnology firms and has been elected fellow to the American Academy of Microbiology.