Philip Hugenholtz

Biography

Beginning with the recognition that we have been ignorant of most microbial diversity due to a strong cultivation bias, Professor Hugenholtz has systematically directed his research to characterise “microbial dark matter” with the ultimate goal of a holistic understanding of microbial evolution and ecology. From 2004 to 2010, Hugenholtz directed the Microbial Ecology and Metagenomics Programs at the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI) in the US. In 2010 he returned home to establish the Australian Centre for Ecogenomics. The Centre was founded around himself as Director, and Deputy Director, Professor Gene Tyson. The Centre comprises 50 researchers/core staff and state-of-the-art infrastructure for conducting ecogenomics research across a wide range of environmental, engineered and clinical ecosystems underpinned by a genome-based evolutionary framework. Hugenholtz was recently awarded an ARC Laureate Fellowship to obtain 100,000 genomes representing uncultured microbial dark matter which will be systematically organised into natural phylogenetic relationships.

Research Interest

Microbial diversity, particularly novel microbial diversity Microbial ecology and evolutionAalborg University, Denmark Technical University of Denmark Advanced Industrial Science & Technology (AIST), Japan Department of Energy, Joint Genome Institutute University of Colorado, Boulder University of North Carolina Massachusetts Institute of Technology University of Copenhagen