About Warren Wakarchuk

Dr. Warren Wakarchuk received his PhD degree in Microbiology from the University of British Columbia. He was a Research Officer at the National Research Council Canada for 19 years, before taking a position in 2012 as Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biology at Ryerson University in Toronto (now known as Toronto Metropolitan University). He was Chair of the Department from 2016-2019. The Wakarchuk Lab relocated to the University of Alberta in 2019 where he was recruited as the next scientific director of GlycoNet. At the University of Alberta, he is a Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences. Within GlycoNet, he is on the research management committee, helped to form the EDI committee and was part of the renewal application team for the second GlycoNet funding cycle. He became scientific director in November of 2020. The Wakarchuk Lab investigates the structure and function of the enzymes which make and degrade various glycoconjugates. This work has been enabling the chemo-enzymatic synthesis of bioactive glycoconjugates both in the laboratory and for industrial projects. Currently the lab is using synthetic biology to examine O-glycan biosynthesis on therapeutic proteins. In collaboration with colleagues, he has contributed to several firsts in the field, among them being cloning and characterization of the first bacterial sialyltransferase, structure determination of the first sialyltransferase from any source as well the structure determination of the first mammalian sialyltransferase. Google Scholar reports 11180 total citations from 140 publications, an h-index of 62, and i10-index of 137.