1983-1992: B.Sc. and Ph.D.
I studied Biochemistry at Queen’s University. I was interested in carbohydrate chemistry, and completed my Ph.D. under the supervision of Dr. Donald Walton. My thesis was on the site-specificity and catalytic effects of glycation, a reaction that occurs between amino groups on proteins and reducing sugars, such as glucose or fructose. Because diabetics have elevated blood glucose levels, these modifications are responsible for many diabetic complications.
1992-1998: Post-Doctoral Fellow
I learned crystallography at the Uppsala Biomedical Centre in Sweden, under the supervision of Dr. Sherry Mowbray. This is where I became interested in how ABC Transporters work, and also did my first SAXS experiments.
I continued doing crystallography at the National Research Council in Montreal, under Dr. Mirek Cygler, where I solved the structure of the Kex1 serine carboxypeptidase, a pro-hormone processing enzyme. My last post-doctoral fellowship was at the Institute for Molecular Biology and Biotechnology in Crete, Greece, with Dr. Anastassios Economou. Here I began studies on the structure and function of the SecA subunit of Preprotein Translocase.
1998-Present: Professor, Biochemistry
In 1998 I moved to London to work at The University of Western Ontario in the Department of Biochemistry. The work in my laboratory has focussed on ATP-hydrolyzing transport systems and we often collaborate with researchers on projects involving protein structure and mechanism. We are also working on a very interesting enzyme, Quinone Reductase 2, that we believe is involved in the cellular response to xenobiotic stress and may have roles in malaria, neuronal function, and the effects of a number of drugs used for cancer chemotherapy.