Originally a microbiologist from Canada, Leo studied at the University of Alberta, graduating in 1983. His PhD (Dalhousie University, 1991) was on genome mapping of Haloferax, an archaeon from the Dead Sea. He worked on genomic resources for several species and genome mapping of mouse in Hans Lehrach’s laboratory at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund laboratory in London and at the Max-Planck-Institut für molekulare Genetik in Berlin.
He was at the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Research Centre, King’s College London from 2000-2014, where he worked on functional genomics and epigenomics, identifying genes involved in behaviour in the mouse and in depression, schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease in humans.
