Dr. Raul Cano is Professor Emeritus at the Biological Sciences Department, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Dr. Cano is the founder and Director of the Environmental Biotechnology Institute (EBI). Dr. Cano specializes in forensic and environmental microbiology. He is a Visiting Researcher in Microbiology at the University of Seville and the University of the Balearic Islands. He has also collaborates with food and environmental health institutes (CIAD and CICY) in Mexico.

Dr. Cano is well known for his groundbreaking work with ancient DNA and microorganisms. His work has been published in scientific journals including Science, Nature, Microbial Ecology, Applied and Environmental Microbiology, and many more. His work has resulted in patents for isolating and characterizing ancient bacteria from amber inclusions as well as several genes from his efforts in the Lactobacillus acidophilus genome project.

The University of Montana granted his Ph.D. in Microbiology. Dr. Cano also holds degrees in Genetics and Clinical Microbiology. He has taught at Cal Poly for more than 35 years, where he has received more than a dozen awards, including the prestigious Carski Award. Dr. Cano has written several textbooks and laboratory procedural manuals as well as edited a microbial forensics book. He is fluent in Spanish.

Dr. Cano has been elected Fellow to the American Academy of Microbiology. He has served as scientific consultant in drug discovery and drug characterization to Biotechnology firms as well as provided litigation support to many law firms in the areas of environmental, forensic and public health microbiology.

Dr. Cano has been married for 40 years, has three children and 3 grandchildren. He enjoys big game fishing, traveling and backpacking.