Andrew Kropinski
Education: BSc, MSc, PhD, University of British Columbia, Canada. Highest academic position: Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Queen’s University, Canada. Highest Public Health Agency of Canada position: Senior Research Scientist Distinction: Honorary Foreign Member, Georgian National Academy of Science. I have been working on bacterial virus (bacteriophages, phages) for over 50 years, work that has resulted in over 170 publications in peer-reviewed journals, two books (Bacteriophage: Methods and Protocols, Humana Press, 2009), and 24 book chapters. In addition, I have deposited over 100 DNA sequences with the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the great majority being complete bacteriophage genomes. As the Chair of the Bacterial and Archaeal Viruses Subcommittee of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses and a National Center for Biotechnological Information RefSeq Genome Advisor I take the annotation and taxonomy of deposited phages seriously, communicating changes to my NCBI colleagues on a weekly basis. My earlier works on phages, at Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario, Canada) resulted in their use in the isolation and characterization of lipopolysaccharide-deficient mutants of Pseudomonas aeruginosa; and, in the production of vector systems for general cloning, promoter identification and site-specific integration in this bacterium. Last, the Pseudomonas phage work resulted in a genomic and glycomic understanding of serotype conversion mediated by phage D3. My work as a Research Scientist at the Laboratory for Foodborne Zoonoses on the development and validation of molecular diagnostic techniques which mimic the Kaufmann-White-Le Minor serological procedure for subtyping Salmonella isolates resulted in sequencing of the genomes of members of all serogroups. Recent work at the University of Guelph with scientists in Pathobiology, and Molecular and Cellular Biology has concentrated on the genomics of swine, horse and fish pathogens. Lastly, I developed and maintain a site (Online Analysis Tools, http://molbiol-tools.ca) of annotated URLs pointing to Internet resources for molecular biologists. Several of these sites were developed at my request.