Biographical synopsis Paul J. Brindley, Ph.D. [born Brisbane, Australia; married (Dr. Victoria H. Mann, one child, Meredith) is Professor of Microbiology at the Department of Microbiology, Immunology & Tropical Medicine, and at the Research Center for Neglected Diseases of Poverty, in the School of Medicine & Health Sciences of the George Washington University (GW), Washington DC. He is an alumnus of the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia and undertook post-doctoral training at the National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s NIAID Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases, Bethesda, Maryland, in the laboratory of Alan Sher. He has held faculty level appointments at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Brisbane, Australia, University College Dublin, Ireland, and at Tulane University, New Orleans, LA where he was the William Vincent Professor of Tropical Medicine. He was the recipient of the Scholar Award in Molecular Parasitology, Infectious Diseases Research of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund (2001-2006) and is a Fellow of the American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene (2014). In 2019 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science, honoris causa, by Khon Kaen University, Thailand. Dr. Brindley is co-author of >330 peer-reviewed articles, his current Scopus h-index score of 57, Google Scholar h-index score of 69, and he is the editor of the books, ‘Mobile Genetic Elements of Metazoan Parasites’, Landes Biosciences, 2009, and ‘Gene function in schistosomes: recent advances towards a cure’, 2015, Frontiers of Genetics e-book. He is Editor-in-Chief of PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, a member of the editorial boards of the International Journal for Parasitology and Mobile Genetic Elements, and guest topic editor at Frontiers in Genetics and Advances in Parasitology. He is chair of the Institutional Biosafety Committee at GW. Twenty scientists – many of from endemic countries and/or diverse backgrounds - have successfully completed doctoral dissertation degrees, and >10 scientists have undertaken post-doctoral training, in his laboratory. His research focus is neglected tropical diseases, especially functional genomics approaches to investigate helminthic infections, and helminth infection-induced cancers, research sponsored by ongoing awards from the NIH and the Wellcome Trust. He maintains active research collaborations in the US, Thailand, Australia, Germany, France, Ireland, Portugal, Britain, Russia, China, Brazil, and Uruguay.