Andrew G. McArthur, Ph.D.
Department of Biochemistry & Biomedical Sciences
Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research
McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Dr. McArthur is a Professor and the inaugural David Braley Chair in Computational Biology at the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research and Department of Biochemistry & Biomedical Sciences at McMaster University.
Dr. McArthur has had a 30+ year research career in the United States and Canada, including postdoctoral experience at the National Museum of Natural History and NIH-funded faculty positions at the Marine Biological Laboratory (Woods Hole, MA) and Brown University, where he led the computational biology of sequencing the genome of the diarrheal pathogen Giardia intestinalis, plus 10 years of experience in the private sector.
As part of the McMaster Global Nexus for Pandemics and Biological Threats, his research team focuses on building tools, databases, and algorithms for genomic surveillance of infectious pathogens, and he leads the globally recognized Comprehensive Antibiotic Resistance Database (card.mcmaster.ca).
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. McArthur led the McMaster SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance core on behalf of the Canadian COVID Genomics Network (CanCOGeN) and the Public Health Agency of Canada, developing Canada’s SARS-CoV-2 Illumina GeNome Assembly Line (SIGNAL) software for variant detection.
Dr. McArthur’s research program often involves close collaboration with Public Health agencies and license agreements with industrial partners.
Bullet Points
- HBSc – Department of Zoology, Western University (1991)
- PhD – Department of Biology, University of Victoria (1996)
- Postdoctoral training:
- National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution) (1996-1998)
- Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA (1998-1999)
- Faculty positions:
- Marine Biological Laboratory (2003-2006)
- Brown University (2005-2006)
- McMaster University (2014-present)
- Cisco Chair in Bioinformatics (2014-2019)
- David Braley Chair in Bioinformatics (2021-present)
- Industry – McArthur Bioinformatics (2006-2014)
One Interesting Fact
Dr. McArthur’s Ph.D. research was in deep-sea biology, spending time in submarines and using robotics to study animals at extreme depths at volcanic ridges. He was amongst the first to use DNA sequencing to verify the survival of ‘relic’ animals, thought to have gone extinct millions of years ago, at extreme depths.
