Faculty Spotlight: Brody Duncan
Brody Duncan, MD, is the new Program Director for the Medical Microbiology residency program. He has recently completed his residency training in Medical Microbiology at McMaster, and is the newest Medical Microbiologist at HRLMP and Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine at McMaster University. His primary office is at MUMC, where he is the Lead of Pediatric Medical Microbiology.
His research interests include antimicrobial resistance and the appropriate utilization of microbiological assays. Recent recognitions include the John Fernandes Award at the DPMM Resident Research Day 2022, the Canadian College of Microbiology Student Poster Award at the AMMI–CACMID Annual Conference 2023, and the SJHH Resident Award for Excellence in Laboratory Medicine. He is also pursuing a part-time MSc in the lab of Dr. Andrew McArthur to study the growing field of bioinformatics and its applications to antibiotic resistance testing in the clinical microbiology laboratory.
Q. What is your specialty and why did you choose it?
A. I am a medical microbiologist, which means I am a physician specialized in the clinical applications of microbiology for testing and treating infections. I started medical school with a keen interest in infectious disease, but it wasn’t until my electives that I discovered this awesome specialty that allowed me to impact the care of not just individual patients, but entire hospital systems (and even whole cities, as COVID-19 demonstrated). Microbiology is a fast-moving specialty where the technologies are rapidly improving and new diseases can emerge at any time, so there’s always something exciting to work on.
Q. What brought you to McMaster?
A. One thing that always impressed me about the medical microbiology division at McMaster is how multi-disciplinary it is. All of the microbiologists are also infectious disease clinicians, and by seeing the struggles and successes of our patients it helps give grounding to the work we do in the laboratory. There is also a strong emphasis on research and education, which are important skills for any academic physician. It is my pleasure to be joining such a collaborative and supportive faculty.
Spotlight