Dr. Roy Duncan is the Killam Chair in Virology and a Distinguished Research Professor at Dalhousie University in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. His research group discovered the reovirus FAST proteins, the smallest known proteins capable of inducing cell-cell membrane fusion. Dr. Duncan’s structure-function studies provided a detailed mechanistic understanding of how FAST proteins function as minimalist membrane fusion machines and revealed interesting insights into the evolution of these ancestral, virus-encoded cell-cell fusogens and their role in reovirus pathogenesis. He founded Fusogenix Inc. and co-founded Entos Pharmaceuticals to develop and commercialize a fusogenic proteoliposome vehicle (PLV) for intracellular drug delivery based on the FusogenixTM FAST protein technology. Dr. Duncan is a CIHR Foundation grant holder, and his research program has been continuously funded by CIHR and NSERC for over 30 years. He is also the recipient of numerous mentoring awards, including the Mentor Award for Senior Investigators from the Canadian Society of Virology. Dr. Duncan has been a long-term member and Vice Chair of the Institute Advisory Board for the CIHR Institute of Infection and Immunity, and a long-serving Chair of numerous CIHR grant panels and of the Reovirus subgroup of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV). His studies on FAST protein and reovirus phylogeny provided the basis for Orthoreovirus taxonomy, and he has co-authored the semi-annual ICTV Reports for the Genus Orthoreovirus for over 20 years.