About the Authors

B. Brett Finlay, PhD, is professor of microbiology at the University of British Columbia and a world leader in how bacterial infections work. He has been studying microbes for over thirty years and has published over four hundred and fifty articles. Also a founder of the biotech companies Inimex, Vedanta, and Microbiome Insights, Brett is Officer of the Order of Canada—the highest Canadian civilian recognition. He lives in Vancouver, BC, with his wife, who is a pediatrician, and has two grown-up kids.

Take a look at what is being researched in his lab.

Marie-Claire Arrieta, PhD, trained in the Finlay lab and is now an assistant professor at the University of Calgary in Canada. She has been studying intestinal microbiology and immunology for the past 10 years. Her recent study connecting asthma in very young babies to missing key intestinal bacterial species was deemed a breakthrough in the field and was reported by dozens of news outlets around the world in 2015. Arrieta has been published in leading scientific journals such as Gastroenterology, PNAS, and Science Translational Medicine. She spends her busy days juggling between experiments, science writing, kindergarten pick-ups, and play dates for her two young children.