
I was born in Quebec and grew up in Nova Scotia. I am a Professor and Arthur B. McDonald Research Chair of Excellence at Dalhousie University in Halifax. I am also Director of Dalhousie’s Institute for Comparative Genomics.
I did a Ph.D. in 2001 in the laboratory of W. Ford Doolittle. After postdoctoral research at the University of British Columbia with Patrick Keeling, I returned to Dalhousie as a faculty member in 2003. My scientific interests lie at the interface of molecular biology, genetics, genomics, and microbial evolution. You can learn more about my research here.
Between 2003 and 2017, I was a member of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. In 2012 I was a Visiting By-Fellow at Churchill College, University of Cambridge. In 2015 I was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, and in 2017 I was appointed to the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.
My contributions to the scientific community include serving as Treasurer of the International Society for Molecular Biology & Evolution (2009-2011) and Associate Editor for various journals, including Journal of Phycology, Phycological Research, and Genome Biology & Evolution. I am currently an Editorial Board member of Current Biology, Environmental Microbiology and BMC Biology. I am the author of more than 170 scientific publications and two books. I can be contacted here.