Home | James Knight, PhD

A brief history

Although formally trained as a molecular biologist, I have been programming since 2000. In 2015 I became a full-time developer and now work as the head of software at Cultivarium. I specialize in scientific software - using AI to accelerate how I build, and building AI into the tools themselves to accelerate discovery.

Publications

First paper published

My first paper was published in 2007. It documented structural and residue conservation in the protein kinase superfamily and showed how this information could be used to predict unknown protein kinase structures.

First review article

The first review article I wrote discussed the role of protein kinases in skeletal muscle cell proliferation and differentiation.

First Nature publication

My first paper in a Nature journal (Nature Methods) describes the suite of web tools we built to aid molecular biologists in visualizing protein-protein interaction data.

First Nature paper

My first publication in Nature itself is a co-first authored publication with my colleague Dr Chris Go, describing our novel large-scale attempt at mapping the cell using proteomic techniques.

Education

BSc in Biology and Mathematics

I attended McMaster University for my first undergraduate degree, studying mathematics and biology. The emphases were algebra and anatomy respectively.

BA in English and History

I attended the University of York in the UK for my second undergraduate degree in English and History, focusing on Victorian literature and Medieval European history.

Vanier Scholarship

During my PhD I was awarded the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship that is given for scholarly achievement and leadership in graduate studies.

PhD in Cellular and Molecular Medicine

At the University of Ottawa I received my PhD, developing computational and methodological approaches for studying the protein kinase superfamily.

Career

NSERC USRA holder

While an undergraduate student I was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council with an Undergraduate Student Research Award to perform research during my Summers in the laboratories of Dr. G. Brian Golding and Dr. David J. D. Earn.

Graduate student at the OHRI

My graduate studies were conducted in the laboratory of Dr. Rashmi Kothary at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute where I developed new computational and experimental techniques for studying the protein kinase superfamily.

Postdoctoral fellow at the LTRI

After completing my PhD I began postdoctoral studies in the laboratory of Dr. Anne-Claude Gingras at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute studying cerebral cavernous malformations using proteomic approaches.

Bioinformatician at the LTRI

After my postdoc, I was employed as a Bioinformatician at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute in the laboratory of Dr. Anne-Claude Gingras, where I performed analysis and created web apps that helped biologists to understand, manage and visualize their own data

Head of Software at Cultivarium

I currently work as the head of software at Cultivarium, where we apply technology to tackle hard scientific problems - like making non-model microorganisms accessible for biotechnology.