John A. Burns, PhD is a Senior Research Scientist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences who studies how genetic information shapes the functions, behaviors, and roles of cells and organisms across the tree of life. His research ranges from the molecular to the ecological: he has developed computational tools to predict how cells feed and interact, sequenced the genomes of enigmatic deep-sea animals and marine protists, and spent more than a decade unraveling a remarkable partnership between a salamander and a green alga. Aboard Falkor (too), Burns is collecting and preserving deep-sea and gelatinous animals for shipboard DNA barcoding and whole-genome sequencing, work that will shed light on some of the ocean’s least-understood inhabitants. He received his BA in Geoscience from Franklin and Marshall College, his PhD in molecular biology from New York University, and completed his postdoctoral training at the American Museum of Natural History, where he remains a Research Associate.
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