After eight years in Woods Hole, Dr. McArthur and his family have made the decision to return to Canada in late May 2006. Over the 8 years in Woods Hole, Dr. McArthur progressed from Postdoctoral Researcher to Assistant Scientist, during which he established an active research program in Global Infectious Disease with funding from NIH/NIAID and the Ellison Medical Foundation. His examination of molecular approaches to difficult evolutionary questions led him to join the effort to sequence the entire 12 Mbp genome of the protistan parasite Giardia lamblia, hypothesized to be one of the oldest and most primitive eukaryotes alive. He was the lead computational biologist for the Giardia lamblia genome project, and principal investigator on NIH-funded Giardia lamblia, Trypanosoma brucei, and Schistosoma mansoni gene expression projects, which used Serial Analysis of Gene Expression (SAGE) to examine global gene expression in the context of parasite life cycles and the origins of virulence.
Thanks to all of our friends and colleagues in Woods Hole for eight wonderful years and special thanks to all of the past and present members of the McArthur lab who made research life at MBL fantastic!