Andrew Sharpe is the Director of Genomics and Bioinformatics at GIFS and joins P2IRC in the capacities of theme lead of phenometrics and lead of the genomics and bioinformatics platform that is supporting the initiative. Dr. Sharpe oversees efforts to establish integrated crop genomics, informatics, and phenomics platforms to support both GIFS and P2IRC.
Dr. Sharpe received his BSc (Hons) in Biological Sciences from the University of Leicester in 1988 and his PhD in Plant Genetics from the University of East Anglia in 1997 while working at the John Innes Centre in the UK. He brings significant experience in plant genetics and genomics to P2IRC and GIFS from his careers as a senior research officer at the National Research Council of Canada and at the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada research centre in Saskatoon. Dr. Sharpe has coordinated several projects to establish genomics and molecular genetics resources in numerous crops including canola, wheat, and lentil. He is currently co-lead on the $10M Genome Canada / Prairie 'Canadian Triticum Applied Genomics' (CTAG2) project, which recently led the development of a high quality whole genome assembly of the bread wheat genome.