Marie Elliot

Dr. Elliot is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Biology at McMaster University. She is also an associate member of the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences, and a member of both the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research and the Biointerfaces Institute.

Dr. Elliot attended the University of Alberta, where she received her B.Sc. (1995), followed by her Ph.D. (2000), working with Dr. Brenda Leskiw on the regulation of gene expression in Streptomyces. After completing her Ph.D., she continued her training in the lab of Prof. Mark Buttner at the John Innes Centre (a British government research institute in Norwich, UK) as an Alberta Heritage Foundation Post-doctoral Scholar, where she worked on multicellular development in Streptomyces.

In 2005, Dr. Elliot joined the Department of Biology at McMaster University. She has received an Early Researcher Award from the Government of Ontario (Ministry of Research and Innovation), held a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Molecular Microbiology and Microbial Genomics (2005-2015), and was a McMaster University Scholar (2015-2019). In 2021, she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, and was awarded a McMaster Science Research Chair.

She is further committed to science education and student success, and has been recognized for her contributions to graduate supervision (2020 President's Award for Excellence in Graduate Supervision) and post-doctoral mentoring (2015 FHS Post-Doctoral Supervision Award), and has received several MSU Teaching Award nominations.

Dr. Elliot currently serves on the Scientific Executive Committee for the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research, and is a member of the Editoral Board for the Journal of Bacteriology, Molecular Microbiology, and Current Opinion in Microbiology. She is a former President of the Canadian Society of Microbiologists (2018) and was an Editor of Applied and Environmental Microbiology from 2014-2019.

Outside of the lab, running keeps her both happy and sane, and while her competitive days are largely behind her, she still enjoys lacing up for the occasional cross-country championship. She was a founding member of FAB Foundation - and continues to support this not-for-profit charity aimed at providing opportunities for youth girls in disadvantaged communities.