Dr. Eric Brown is a Distinguished University Professor at McMaster University in the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences and member of the M.G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research.Dr. Brown is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and has received a number of other awards including the Canadian Society of Microbiologists Murray Award for career achievement, the Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences Merck Frosst Prize for new investigators and a Canada Research Chair in Microbial Chemical Biology.Dr. Brown is a former department Chair and Director of a leading edge educational program at the nexus of science and commerce, the Biomedical Discovery and Commercialization program. He has served on advisory boards for a variety of companies as well as national and international associations, including a term as President of the Canadian Society of Biochemistry, Molecular and Cellular Biology, member of the Medical Review Panel of the Gairdner Foundation and member of the Institute of Infection and Immunity of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Currently, he is a member of the editorial board of ACS Infectious Diseases, a member of the Advisory Board of the Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Research and serves as a College Chair advising the Canadian Institutes of Health Research on peer review.Dr. Brown's research interest is the complex biology that underlies bacterial survival strategies. He and his research team aim to understand and subvert these systems in drug resistant superbugs. To this end the Brown lab research group is using tools of chemical biology and molecular genetics to probe poorly understood aspects of bacterial physiology. The overriding goal of these studies is to contribute fresh directions for new antibiotics.