Roger Lévesque

My research interest was stimulated by an undergraduate degree in biology with a major in ecology at the Université de Moncton, New Brunswick. In the last year, I took a course in microbiology and realized that microorganisms live in all parts of the biosphere and maybe could “do anything and everything” in all ecosystems. The role of bacteria as the key element in many cycles including carbon, nitrogen, biogeochemical and in plant, animal and human health and disease made a lasting impression. A stiff learning curve was my first experience in graduate studies at the Université de Montréal in bacterial ecology. I studied interactions between Staphylococcus aureus and Candida albicans to understand changes in virulence in chemostat culture and in a mouse model of infection. A Ph.D. at Université Laval led to a major interest in antibiotic resistance and enzymes capable of hydrolyzing penicillins, cephalosporins and next generation antibiotics. With an award from MRC, I then did postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard University in bacterial genetics and in molecular biology studying multiresistance transposable elements, identified new beta-lactamase enzymes and learned the tricks of the trade such as grant writing and manuscripts, thanks to George Jacoby, Brian Ward and several others. A stint at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the Delbruck lab convinced me that bacterial genetics and sophisticated tools and methods would yield exciting research in (micro) biology. Asking key questions in research using integrative and systems biology and based upon knowledge at the edge of various disciplines and complementary approaches are my main interests.