Sujeevan Ratnasingham

Biodiversity informatics · DNA barcoding infrastructure · machine learning for taxonomic inference · knowledge systems for life science

I design and build the data systems that let thousands of researchers turn DNA sequences into knowledge about life on Earth. I am the architect of BOLD, the Barcode of Life Data System; the BIN framework for DNA-based species registration; and mBRAVE, a platform for high-throughput metabarcoding analysis. My current work is on AI-queryable knowledge graphs and governed AI for biodiversity science.

SR
28,000+
citations
33
h-index
25M+
DNA barcodes hosted in BOLD
20 yrs
of production research infrastructure

01Research

My work sits at the intersection of biodiversity science, large-scale data engineering and machine learning. The recurring question is how to make biological data at planetary scale usable: interoperable across institutions, computable by models, and trustworthy enough for regulatory and forensic use.

Biodiversity data infrastructure

Architecture of federated, multi-tenant platforms for specimen, sequence and observation data; provenance and governance models; data standards such as the Barcode Core Data Model (BCDM) and its mappings to Darwin Core and MIxS.

BOLDBCDMDarwin CoreFAIR

Machine learning for taxonomic inference

Algorithms that assign sequences to species without complete reference libraries: the BIN clustering framework, GPU-accelerated probabilistic classification (PROTAX-GPU), and multimodal insect datasets for representation learning (BIOSCAN-1M / 5M).

clusteringPROTAX-GPUBIOSCANmultimodal

Metabarcoding and biomonitoring

High-throughput pipelines for environmental DNA and bulk-sample sequencing (mBRAVE), and statistical methods that extend inference from common to rare species, such as CORAL, applied to a quarter-million Malagasy arthropod taxa.

mBRAVEeDNACORALbiosurveillance

Knowledge graphs and governed AI

Domain-specific knowledge graphs that make biodiversity data queryable by language models with provenance intact; on-premises, auditable AI pipelines for government and regulatory programmes.

knowledge graphsLLMprovenanceon-prem inference

02Systems I have built

Each platform below is in production and used by the global DNA barcoding community. Together they form a stack from raw sequence to institutional knowledge.

BOLD 2005→
Barcode of Life Data System. The central repository and workbench for DNA barcode data: 25M+ sequences, 1M+ species, curated reference libraries, identification engine and analytical tools. Recognised by NIST as a species-identification resource for forensic use. boldsystems.org
BIN 2013→
Barcode Index Number system. An unsupervised, machine-learning-based registry that clusters sequences into operational taxonomic units and assigns persistent identifiers, allowing species to be tracked before they are formally described. 2,700+ citations.
mBRAVE 2017→
Multiplex Barcode Research and Visualization Environment. Cloud platform for processing metabarcoding and multiplexed barcoding runs against BOLD reference libraries; 100TB+ of sequence data processed. mbrave.net
LifeScanner
Conservation technology initiative that puts DNA-based species identification in the hands of citizen scientists, schools and NGOs through a sample kit and mobile app. lifescanner.net
BCDM
Barcode Core Data Model. An open, Frictionless-Data-based standard for DNA barcode records, with published mappings to Darwin Core and MIxS. github.com/DNAdiversity/BCDM
BIO·NEXUS
Knowledge operations platform for biodiversity and life-science programmes: field capture, governed curation, LLM-guided analytical pipelines and audit-ready reporting. In regulatory use by government agencies supporting wildlife-crime investigation. biolytica.ca

03Selected publications

Citation counts from Google Scholar. Full list on Google Scholar.

2025
Ovaskainen O, et al., incl. Ratnasingham S
Nature Methods 22, 2074–2082 R package · Zenodo pipeline
2024
BOLD v4: A centralized bioinformatics platform for DNA-based biodiversity data
Ratnasingham S, Wei C, Chan D, deWaard J, Ballesteros-Mejia L, Boutou A, et al.
DNA Barcoding: Methods and Protocols (Springer) 177 citations
2024
Gharaee Z, Lowe SC, Gong Z, et al., incl. Ratnasingham S
NeurIPS Datasets & Benchmarks
2023
A step towards worldwide biodiversity assessment: The BIOSCAN-1M insect dataset
Gharaee Z, Gong Z, Pellegrino N, Zarubiieva I, Haurum JB, Lowe SC, McKeown JTA, Ho CCY, McLeod J, Wei YC, Agda J, Ratnasingham S, Steinke D, Chang AX, Taylor GW, Fieguth P
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 59 citations
2013
Ratnasingham S, Hebert PDN
PLOS ONE 8(7): e66213 2,771 citations
2007
Ratnasingham S, Hebert PDN
Molecular Ecology Notes 7(3): 355–364 8,142 citations
2003
Hebert PDN, Ratnasingham S, deWaard JR
Proceedings of the Royal Society B 270 (Suppl 1) 7,296 citations

04Code

Public repositories from github.com/DNAdiversity. This list refreshes from the GitHub API when the page loads; the entries below are the fallback.

Barcode Core Data Model: a data standard for organising and sharing DNA barcode data, with mappings to BOLD, Darwin Core and MIxS.
GPL-3.0★ 5⑂ 4
Web portal for browsing and querying DNA barcode datasets.
HTML★ 1
Detects cross-contamination in ultraconserved-element sequencing runs.
Python
PROTAX-GPU (fork)
GPU-accelerated probabilistic taxonomic classification of DNA barcodes, from the Guelph Machine Learning Research Group.
Python

05Positions

06Recognition & service

Ebbe Nielsen Prize 2010

Awarded by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) for the development of BOLD, "a major and innovative landmark in bringing genomic data on biodiversity to research." First Canadian recipient.

NIST forensic recognition

BOLD is listed by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology as a species-identification resource in its forensic database guidance.

Advisory Committee on Canadian Scientific Data Governance

Member, convened by Canada's Office of the Chief Science Advisor.

Government of Canada

iBOL BOLD Working Group

Co-lead of Working Group 3.1, responsible for the informatics backbone of the International Barcode of Life project.

07Contact

I am open to academic collaborations, advisory roles and conversations about biodiversity data infrastructure, taxonomic ML and governed AI.

sujeevan@ratnasingham.com
Guelph, Ontario, Canada