After obtaining his Ph.D, Gene went on to become Assistant Professor, Senior Research Fellow at the Advanced Water Management Centre, and Deputy Director at the Australian Centre for Ecogenomics at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. He is a microbial ecologist whose research applies molecular approaches to understand the structure and function of microbial communities in the environment. Following his Ph.D., at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2006-2009), he conducted postdoctoral research work on the composition, functional potential, regulation, and evolution of complex marine microbial communities at sites around the world. His research interests at the Advanced Water Management Centre include molecular microbial ecology, microbial diversity, microbial evolution, the role of microorganism in the biogeochemical cycles that underpin life on Earth.