Beant Kapoor

Dr. Kapoor joined ORNL in 2025 as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Integrative Microbiomics Group in the Biosciences Division (BSD) within the Biological and Environmental Systems Science Directorate (BESSD). Dr. Kapoor contributes to multiple research projects within ORNL including:

• The Secure Ecosystem Engineering and Design Science Focus Area
• The Plant-Microbe Interfaces Science Focus Area
• The Center for Bioenergy Innovation

Dr. Kapoor is a bioinformatician at heart whose research centers on decoding plant–microbe interactions through integrative omics and computational biology. As a Postdoctoral Researcher at ORNL, he leverages large-scale metagenomic, metatranscriptomic, and plant genomic datasets to uncover the molecular networks governing plant growth, nutrient dynamics, and ecosystem resilience. His work integrates high-performance computing, statistical modeling, and machine learning to develop scalable workflows for metagenome assembly, binning, and structural and functional annotation. He actively collaborates on projects exploring functional gene abundance shifts, gene expression patterns in the poplar microbiome, and genome-wide association studies using the Populus pangenome.