BSc Biology '08
Assistant Professor,
Department of Microbiology & Immunology,
University of California,
San Francisco, CA
Joseph Bondy-Denomy was born and raised in London, Ontario, and started his transformative experience at the University of Waterloo in 2003. Dr. Bondy-Denomy graduated from the Biology program in 2008, spending co-op terms in labs at Western and McGill. From there, Dr. Bondy-Denomy began his PhD in Dr. Alan Davidson’s lab at the University of Toronto in 2008, graduating in 2014. As a PhD student, Joe studied viruses that infect and kill bacteria, trying to understand how these two natural enemies battle each other. Joe discovered the first examples of proteins made by these viruses that inhibit the CRISPR-Cas bacterial immune system. Joe then started his own research group at the University of California, San Francisco in 2015 and is currently an Assistant Professor. The Bondy-Denomy lab continues to investigate CRISPR-Cas immunity, with implications in therapeutics for human genetic and infectious disease, as well as our basic understanding the microbial world. Dr. Bondy-Denomy is Scientific Advisory Board Member of SNIPR Biome and Excision BioTherapies and has expanded his research activities to the private sector as co-founder of and Scientific Advisor to Acrigen Biosciences.