Edward grew up in southern Alberta between the Rocky Mountains and Canadian prairies. There, winters are long and harsh while summers give rise to diverse and oftentimes specialized communities of plants that thrive despite the short growing season. These observations led him to wonder about these organisms' adaptive and ecological successes.

The scale of beauty, diversity, and adaptation exhibited by plants is awe-inspiring and a key influence behind Edward’s interest in plant biodiversity research, which he pursued by obtaining his Bachelor of Science (Honors) in plant biology at the University of British Columbia, followed by his decision to stick around as a graduate student! Broadly, his goal as a researcher is to use genetic and genomic methods to characterize taxa from across the land plant tree-of-life.

Currently, Edward is working on two main projects: first, to describe the evolutionary changes that occur in the nuclear genomes of plants that derive their nutrition from soil fungi (mycoheterotrophic plants); and second, to contribute data to a DNA barcode reference library for the mosses, liverworts, and hornworts of Canada and its surrounding regions, including those that hail from the High Arctic.