Announcement: Gregory Gloor, PhD, appointed Chair, Department of Biochemistry

I am pleased to announce that Gregory Gloor, PhD, has been appointed as Chair, Department of Biochemistry, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Western University effective from July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2024.

Professor Gloor earned his BSc in Honours Genetics from Western University and also his PhD from the Department of Biochemistry at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry, Western. He then went on to complete Post-Doctoral studies at the Laboratory of Genetics at University of Wisconsin, Madison. His first faculty position was in Medical Genetics at Memorial University in Newfoundland. In 1993, he joined the Department of Biochemistry, Schulich Medicine & Dentistry, as an Assistant Professor. He was appointed as an Associate Professor in 1997 and full Professor in 2002.

He maintains an active research program. Professor Gloor has studied and published on a diversity of research topics. Past topics that he studied during his training and initial appointments include: mammalian virus replication for his Honors BSc; bacteriophage Mu genome structure, infection and integration for his PhD; P element regulation in Drosophila for his Post-Doctoral studies; gene targeting and somatic cell homologous recombination in Drosophila. Current funded research projects include protein evolution, human microbiome studies of Clostridium difficile infection, microbial ecosystem metagenomics and metatranscriptomics of waste-water treatment, and using conjugative plasmids and CRISPR to modulate microbial ecosystems.

He has published more than 125 peer-reviewed manuscripts including papers appearing in Science, Nature, Cell and PNAS. He is an in-demand speaker, most recently on the topic of proper data analytic methods for high-throughput sequencing. He has delivered more than 20 invited international presentations including at leading research universities such as Harvard and Cambridge.

Professor Gloor has held funding as a principle or co-investigator from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), National Institutes of Health Research, NIH, and the Ontario Genomics Institute and from a number of private foundations such as the Cancer Research Society of Canada, and the Weston Family Foundation. He currently holds awards from NSERC, and CIHR, and has several ongoing industrial collaborations and consultations.

He has served as Associate and Section Editor for BMC Microbiome, has served on many grant review panels for the National Cancer Society of Canada, the Crohn’s and Colitis Society, the Medical Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. He is currently the Chair of the CIHR Genomics Committee, and a member of the CIHR College of Reviewers.

Professor Gloor is the recipient of several awards including a Graduate Entrance Scholarship, Western University; K.M. Hunter Fellowship, National Cancer Institute of Canada; Salary Award, Medical Research Council of Canada, Development Grant in Molecular Biology; WL Magee Teaching Award, Biochemistry, Western University; Schulich School of Medicine Teaching Award; a five time award from University Student’s Council Teaching Honor Roll; Faculty Scholar and Faculty Development Award (UdG Spain).

Please join me in congratulating Professor Gloor on his appointment.

Davy Cheng
Dean (Acting), Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry
Distinguished University Professor & EPICOR Research Chair
Western University, London, Canada