Dr. Gerry Wright - a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences

Dr. Gerard (Gerry) Wright is a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster University and an associate member in the Departments of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and of Pathology and Molecular Medicine. Gerry established the Institute of Infectious Disease Research (IIDR) and Canada's Global Nexus for Pandemics and Biological Threats at McMaster University, and served as Director for many years, steering both institutions through significant growth and transformation. Gerry still remains a respected member of both institutes.

Dr. Gerry Wright received his BSc in Biochemistry (1986) and his PhD in Chemistry (1990) from the University of Waterloo, where he conducted research in the area of antifungal drugs under Dr. John Honek. He followed this up with 2 years of postdoctoral research in Chris Walsh’s lab at Harvard Medical School in Boston, focusing on the molecular mechanism of resistance to the antibiotic vancomycin in enterococci. He joined the Department of Biochemistry at McMaster in 1993.

He holds the Michael G. DeGroote Chair in Infection and Anti-Infective Research. From 2001-2007, Gerry served as Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster. Gerry was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (2012) and a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology (2013). He is the recipient of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Scientist (2000-2005), Medical Research Council of Canada Scholar (1995-2000), Killam Research Fellowship (2011-2012), R.G.E. Murray Award for Career Achievement of the Canadian Society of Microbiologists (2013), NRC Research Press Senior Investigator Award from the Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences (2016), Premier’s Research Excellence (1999), and the Polanyi Prize (1993). In 2016, he was named a McMaster Distinguished University Professor. Gerry has been honored with the 2023 McMaster Faculty Association Award for Outstanding Service and the prestigious 2024 Killiam Prize for his internationally renowned research on antimicrobial resistance.

Gerry has served on grant panel advisory boards and chaired grant panels for several funding agencies in Canada, the US, and Europe, and consults widely for the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors. He is the author of over 300 manuscripts and is a member of the editorial boards of several peer-reviewed journals including mBio, Antimicrobial Agents Chemotherapy, Cell Chemistry and Biology, and the Journal of Antibiotics. He is an Associate Editor of ACS Infectious Diseases and Editor of Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Antimicrobial Therapeutics Reviews.

In addition to his scientific achievements, Gerry's Batman-Job is a drummer for the “Null Hypothesis,” a pants-dropping, hard-rocking, booty-shaking cover band. Gerry also likes to spend his free time virtually watching the avian visitors at his bird feeders through installed bird cams.