James Scott is a tenured full professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health (University of Toronto) where he served as Division Head of Occupational & Environmental Health for 8 years. He is cross-appointed in the Dept of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, and in the Division of Clinical Pharmacology & Toxicology (Department of Medicine) at the University of Toronto. Scott is the Director of the UAMH Centre for Global Microfungal Biodiversity which operates the largest biorepository of fungal pathogens of humans and animals in the Western Hemisphere. Scott’s research focuses on the interactions between people and microorganisms (fungi, bacteria, and viruses) (~160 peer-reviewed papers, H-index: 55). His mycological work on the systematics, ecology, and aerobiology of fungi responsible for infectious and allergic diseases of humans and animals is widely cited. His rediscovery and biological investigations on Baudoinia, the Whiskey Fungus, have been the subject of many articles in the popular press including in Wired, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Scott’s work on bacteria focuses on the influence of environmental exposures on the acquisition and maturation of the infant gut microbiome, and the airborne movement of pathogenic bacteria and viruses in healthcare buildings and outdoor air. Scott serves as the lead mycology consultant to the Ontario Poison Centre on mushroom ingestion poisonings, and to Dynacare Medical Laboratories on clinical fungal diseases. Since 1993, Scott has owned and operated a medium-sized Toronto-based biotech company, Sporometrics, that develops and provides specialized diagnostic tools for environmental microbiology.