Revised June 2002CURRICULUM VITAE
DENIS H. LYNN
Birth date: 20 April 1947 (Kingston, Ontario, CANADA)
Citizenship: Canadian
Professional title: Professor, Department of Zoology, University of Guelph
Current addresses (professional):Department of Zoology, University of Guelph
Undergraduate education: University of Guelph (B.Sc. (Hon.), 1969)
Guelph, ON, CANADA
N1G 2W1
E-mail: ddr@uoguelph.ca
Telephone: 519-824-4120 ext. 2746
FAX number: 519-767-1656
Graduate education: University of Toronto (Ph.D., 1975)
Postdoctoral experience:
1977 - Postdoctoral Research Assistant to Professor H.G. Callan and Dr. J. Sommerville, Department of Zoology, The University of St. Andrews, Fife, SCOTLAND. Research: Organization of lampbrush chromosomes.
1976 - Postdoctoral Fellow to Professor P. de Puytorac and Dr. P. Didier, Groupe de Protistologie, Complexe Scientifique des Cezeaux, Universite de Clermont-Ferrand, Aubiere, FRANCE. Research: Comparative ultrastructure and systematics of ciliated protists, especially the hymenostomes.
1975-76 - Postdoctoral fellow to Dr. J.B. Tucker, Department of Zoology, The University, St. Andrews, Fife, SCOTLAND. Research: Developmental and cell biological research with ciliated protists.
Academic and/or research positions:
1992-present - Full professor at University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Research: Systematics and ecology of ciliated protists.
2001 - Visiting professor, Friday Harbor Laboratories, University of Washington, Friday Harbor, WA. Research: Evolution of ciliates symbiotic in echinoderms.
1993 - Visiting professor, Department Biochemie, Universitet Antwerpen, Antwerpen, Belgium. November.
1993 - Visiting professor, Abteilung Zellbiologie, Institut Zoologisches, Universit„t Tübingen, Germany. May - November.
1986 - Visiting professor, Department of Cell Biology, National Jewish Hospital, Denver, Colorado, U.S.A. May - October.
1984-92 - Associate professor at University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Research: Systematics, ecology, and cell biology of ciliated protists.
1977-83 - Assistant professor at University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Research: Systematics, ecology, and cell biology of ciliated protists.
Teaching experience:
I have been teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in zoology and biology since my appointment at Guelph in 1977. I have prepared and taught courses under the following titles:
Invertebrate Zoology
Marine Biology and Oceanography
Comparative Histology
Natural History of Ontario (distance education)
Developmental Biology
Electron Microscopy (graduate course)
Evolutionary Biology
Research in Zoology (philosophy and experimental design)
Independent Study (undergraduate research)
Professional activities, services, and honours:
I am a member of several biological societies at both national and international levels. I have served as a Councillor for the Canadian Society of Zoologists and the International Society of Evolutionary Protistology. I have been President of the Society of Protozoologists and a member of its Executive Committee for over a decade.
I am the Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology, for which I was an Associate Editor for several years. I serve on the editorial board or board of reviewers for Aquatic Microbial Ecology and Journal of Morphology. I am often asked to review papers by other journals and review grant applications for the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.
I have been honored by colleagues who have named two species of ciliates after me.
Research interests:
My research program has concentrated on the biology of the ciliated protozoa. I have been particularly interested in the phylogeny and classification of these remarkable protists, initially using the techniques of light microscopy and electron microscopy. My laboratory focuses on molecular evolution using the sequences of the small subunit rRNA gene to test my ideas of relationships based on earlier technical approaches. My interest in the description and identification of species led me to investigate the ecological role of ciliates, particularly those in marine and freshwater plankton. My colleagues and I have described over 30 new species of ciliates and developed a staining technique that provides quantitative data on abundance and biomass as well as yielding sufficient detail for taxonomic studies.
I have published over 100 full papers or chapters in books relating to the systematics and ecology of ciliated protozoa. Two seminal contributions to the field of ciliate systematics were my 1981 review in Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society on "The organization and evolution of microtubular organelles in ciliated protozoa" and my collaborative work with Dr. E.B. Small on an illustrated guide to over 600 genera of ciliates, classified by the macrosystem of Lynn & Small (Lynn & Small, 2002).