Dr. Trevor Charles holds the position of Professor in Department of Biology, University of Waterloo, and is Director of Waterloo Centre for Microbial Research. He is a bacterial geneticist and leads a research program in plant-microbe interactions, functional metagenomics, and bacterial genome engineering for bioproducts. Following B.Sc. Microbiology at University of British Columbia, he obtained his Ph.D. in Turlough Finan’s lab at McMaster University (symbiotic nitrogen fixation) and did postdoctoral work in Gene Nester’s lab at University of Washington (Agrobacterium). He held a faculty position at McGill University before moving to his current position at University of Waterloo in 1998. He is co-founder and CSO of the company Metagenom Bio Inc., which applies metagenomic and microbial community analysis to challenges in the agriculture and mining sectors.