User:John M Archibald

John M. Archibald is a Canadian scientist and writer. He is currently professor of biochemistry & molecular biology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and Director of Dalhousie’s Centre for Comparative Genomics and Evolutionary Bioinformatics.

Archibald was born in Quebec and raised in Nova Scotia. He received B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Dalhousie University. His doctoral research was carried out in the laboratory of notable molecular evolutionist Ford Doolittle. After postdoctoral research at the University of British Columbia with Patrick Keeling, he returned to Dalhousie as a faculty member in 2003.

Between 2003 and 2017, Archibald was a member of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. In 2012 he was a Visiting By-Fellow at Churchill College, University of Cambridge. In 2015 he was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, and in 2017 was appointed to the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.

Archibald has served as Treasurer of the International Society for Molecular Biology & Evolution (2009-2011) and Associate Editor for various scientific journals, including Journal of Phycology, Phycological Research, and Genome Biology & Evolution. He is currently an Editorial Board member of Current Biology, Eukaryotic Cell, Environmental Microbiology, and BMC Biology. In 2016 Archibald was interviewed by Current Biology.

Archibald is the author of two popular science books, One Plus One Equals One: Symbiosis and the Evolution of Complex Life (Oxford University Press, 2012 and 2016), and Genomics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2018). Together with Alastair Simpson and Claudio Slamovits, he is also Editor of the Handbook of the Protists, second edition of the Handbook of Protoctista by Margulis et al. (Springer International Publishing, 2017).

Archibald’s scientific interests include molecular biology, genetics, genomics, and microbial evolution. He is known for his research on the origin and evolution of microbial eukaryotes and their organelles.