Dr. Matthew Gilmour is a Group Leader in the ‘Microbes in the Food Chain’ programme at the Quadram Institute Bioscience and the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England.   The Gilmour group is interested in understanding the microbial traits of Listeria that contribute to its significant risk as a foodborne contaminant and then human pathogen.  To do this, the group studies the genetic variation and gene dynamics of Listeria isolated from foods and food production environments, with comparison to those clones that have resulted in human illness and outbreaks of disease.  The group also studies microbial populations and metagenomes to get the full view of hazards that are present on foods.  

    Dr. Gilmour was previously the Scientific Director General of Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory (NML), which is renowned for being Canada’s only containment level 4 facility and is home to many scientific innovations, such as the Ebola vaccine. At the NML, Dr. Gilmour’s focus was the strategic leadership of national science informatic needs that result from modern genomics and other ‘big data’ technologies. In 2012 he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in recognition of his achievements in public health genomics and leadership during outbreak response activities.

   Dr. Gilmour also previously served as a Clinical Microbiologist at the Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg, where he was the laboratory lead for Infection Prevention & Control, and he remains interested in the evolution and transmissibility of antibiotic resistant organisms. 

   Dr. Gilmour received his PhD at the University of Alberta under the mentorship of Dr. Diane Taylor, and his thesis work was awarded the Izaak Killam Memorial Scholarship, the Canadian Society of Microbiologist's Graduate Student Microbiologist of the Year Award, and the Governor General's Gold Medal. Dr. Gilmour serves on the board of the Canadian Association for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (CACMID).