Dr. Gerhard Gries, PhD

Gerhard Gries is a Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Simon Fraser University (SFU), Canada.

He received his PhD in forest entomology from the Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen (Germany) in 1984.  Supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, he joined Dr. John Borden’s laboratory at SFU in 1986. After a 2-year limited-term appointment, he became a tenure-track faculty member in 1991, reaching the rank of Full Professor in 2000.

He is currently in the 13th year of an Industrial Research Chair on “Multimodal Animal Communication Ecology”supported by Scotts Miracle-GRO and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. The Chair’s research embraces all sensory modalities (olfaction, vision, audition, vibration, magneto-reception, infra-red sensing).

A recent highlight was identification of the bed bug aggregation pheromone, comprising five volatile attractants and one non-volatile arrestant.

Dr. Gries has graduated 57 students, published 254 peer-reviewed research articles (including 41 with undergraduate students as co-authors), filed 24 patent applications, and produced 13 scientific films on beetles, hoverflies and aphids in collaboration with the Institute of Scientific Film in Germany.  He has received over $9 million dollars of research support as a principal investigator and currently runs a large laboratory with 11 graduate students, three Research Associates, and many undergraduate students, often recruited from his Insect Biology class.  His passion for teaching was recognized by SFU in 1994 through an Excellence-in-Teaching-Award.