Background

About GenPhyto Founder, Dr. Barry Flinn

Dr. Flinn has been involved in tissue culture, molecular biology, biochemistry, functional genomics and mutation breeding research since his PhD studies at the University of British Columbia, and subsequent post-doctoral molecular biology training at the University of Georgia and the University of Ottawa. He has extensive biotechnology experience in applied biology research environments. One such environment was Genesis Research and Development Corp. in Auckland, New Zealand, where he oversaw the development of large-scale gene and promoter candidate screening efforts from the largest forestry gene database at that time, in collaboration with Arborgen LLC, as well as Westvaco and International Paper.  On his return to Canada, Dr. Flinn served as Research Director for Solanum Genomics International Inc., as well as the Co-Lead Investigator for the Genome Canada-funded Canadian Potato Genome Project located in Fredericton, New Brunswick.  His potato efforts were primarily focused on the generation of gene and microarray expression profiling data to identify genes associated with potato development, as well as resistance and susceptibility to Late Blight, as well as the development of activation-tagged mutant potato lines.

Dr. Flinn served for 10 years as the Founding Director of the Institute (Center) for Sustainable and Renewable Resources at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research (IALR), and as an Adjunct Professor in Horticulture and Forestry at Virginia Tech.  The overall focus of the IALR was on applied research for economic development in southern Virginia. In his role at the IALR, he created a research institute targeting basic research with commercialization potential in: 1) high value horticulture and forestry crop development, 2) bio-based products, and 3) molecular breeding for biomass and bioenergy crops.  Dr. Flinn worked closely with a number of companies, including Chemtex/Beta Renewables, with whom he developed a grant-funded collaborative project on Arundo donax clonal propagation, mutation breeding and performance enhancement using beneficial microbial endophytes. 

Following his tenure at the IALR, Dr. Flinn moved to Clemson University's Institute for Translational Genomics for a role in research administration, managing Clemson's US Department of Energy ARPA-E project "TERRA-BOOST: Breeding High Yielding Bioenergy Sorghum for the New Bioenergy Belt." His responsibilities included management, coordination of efforts, and budget tracking for this multi-institutional (Clemson University, Carnegie Mellon University, Donald Danforth Center, Near Earth Autonomy), $7 million (USD) effort. Responsibilities included progress reports to DOE and stakeholders regarding the integration of unmanned robotic phenotyping sensor platforms and machine learning with sorghum genetics, genomics and breeding. as well as outreach and media presentations and field demonstration coordination.

After three years at Clemson University, Dr. Flinn returned to Canada and established GenPhyto Consulting (GenPhyto) in 2018. Since then, Dr. Flinn/GenPhyto has been involved with: 1) Remote research management and reporting for Clemson University’s US Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) award; 2) Technical assistance for University of Ottawa faculty on recombinant protein production/purification, starch-protein binding assays and vector construction; 3) Successful grant application development for CIHR and Genome Ontario with University of Ottawa faculty; 4) Writing/editing assistance to University of Alberta/Carleton University faculty for a successful Genome Canada LSARP submission; and 5) Project management at Carleton University for their Genome Canada LSARP award.