Christoper Lawson

Christopher Lawson is an Assistant Professor in Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry at the University of Toronto. Dr. Lawson received his BASc and MASc degrees in Environmental Engineering from the University of British Columbia, and his PhD in Environmental Engineering (Microbiology minor) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Bioengineering at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (Berkeley Lab). In his newly founded lab at the University of Toronto’s BioZone, Dr. Lawson and his team use synthetic anaerobic microbial communities to discover basic principles governing microbiome function, while also merging approaches from microbial ecology and metabolic engineering to design microbiomes for sustainable chemicals and energy production from waste resources. His research accomplishments have been recognized by the International Society for Microbial Ecology (ISME) – International Water Association (IWA) BioCluster Rising Star Award, the Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award and the W. Wesley Eckenfelder Graduate Research Award by the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP), as well as the Canham Graduate Studies Scholarship from the Water Environment Federation (WEF).

• Microbiome Engineering
• Microbial Ecology
• Biomanufacturing
• Resource Recovery
• Environmental Biotechnology