Turlough Mary Finan
Professor, Biology

Turlough Finan is a Professor of Biology at McMaster University and served as Chair of the Biology department from 1999-2004 and 2005-2008. He obtained a B.Sc and M.Sc in Microbiology at the National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland and PhD in 1981 from the Microbiology Department, University of Guelph, Canada. Following a year at the Connaught Research Institute studying the neutralizing antigens of Polio virus he performed postdoctoral studies on Sinorhizobium in the Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At McMaster, he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on Microbiology, Molecular Genetics and Environmental Microbiology. His research is focused on the N2-fixing symbiosis and plant-microbe interactions. His research has focused on understanding aspects of carbon and phosphate metabolism, genomics and symbiotic genes and the multipartite genome of Sinorhizobium meliloti and is published in over one hundred peer reviewed articles in scientific journals.