He received his Ph.D. from MITand did his postdoctoral work with Ralph Isberg at Tufts University School of Medicine and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.The Ensminger lab has used a combination of microbial genomics, experimental evolution, and microbial systems biology to elucidate molecular and evolutionary processes that shape the host-pathogen interface. Recent work has leveraged a champion of high-throughput biology, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, to uncover novel effector activities for an enigmatic intracellular bacterial pathogen, Legionella pneumophila. Dr. Ensminger was a co-chair of the 2016 CSM Annual Conference and currently serves as the CSM faculty representative for the University of Toronto.