Sean Crowe
Professor, Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Faculty of Science, UBC
Dr. Sean Crowe is a Professor jointly appointed in the Departments of Microbiology and Immunology, and Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at UBC. As a microbiologist and geochemist, Dr. Crowe integrates classical and molecular biological techniques with geochemical methods to study the interactions between the biosphere and Earth's surface chemistry in both natural and engineered environments. His research focuses on the exchange of genomic and functional information among microbial communities spanning heavily human-impacted and relatively pristine ecosystems, targeting the impact of this exchange on ecosystem health, resilience, and biogeochemical cycling.
Dr. Crowe’s work examines how human activities modify microbial community composition, function, and gene flow—including the distribution and transfer of antibiotic resistance genes—across terrestrial, aquatic, and atmospheric interfaces. Current projects in his group use advanced molecular biology and ecophysiological approaches to link the presence and organization of resistance determinants and other genomic traits with rates of key biogeochemical transformation processes.
As an active member of numerous expert working groups addressing global environmental change, climate impacts, and mitigation—including the UNESCO-IOC network on ocean deoxygenation—Dr. Crowe brings a One Health perspective to environmental AMR, supporting collaborative policy and research strategies for surveillance and mitigation of AMR in interconnected ecosystems.
