Derek O'Flaherty, Ph.D

Assistant Professor at University of Guelph

Speaker

Derek O’Flaherty completed his Honours B.Sc. in Chemistry at Concordia University, where he also conducted undergraduate and doctoral research in Professor Christopher Wilds’ lab on chemically modified DNA and their roles in repair and lesion bypass. After earning his PhD in 2016, he joined Jack Szostak’s group at MGH–Harvard as an FRQNT/CIHR Postdoctoral Fellow, developing strategies for nonenzymatic genetic polymer replication relevant to the origins of life. He later worked as a Scientist in high-throughput oligonucleotide synthesis at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals before joining the University of Guelph in 2020 as an Assistant Professor, where his research centers on nucleic acid biotechnology and prebiotic (bio)chemical processes important to the origins of life.