Rees Kassen is Academic Director of the McGill Sustainability Park and an internationally recognized researcher, educator, and author in evolutionary biology at McGill University, Canada. His research focuses on the origins and fate of biodiversity, studied by real-time tracking of microbial populations evolving in the laboratory, a technique called experimental evolution. He helped launch the Coronavirus in the Urban Built Environment (CUBE) initiative, a multi-centre collaboration on built environment surveillance for microbial pathogens. Rees is active at the interface between science, society and policy, serving as Director of the Trottier Institute for Science and Public Policy. He is a long-time hockey player, enthusiastic skier, passable tennis player, and struggling surfer.