Gregory J. Dick is the Director of the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research (CIGLR), a partnership between the University of Michigan and the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory. He also serves as Director of the Great Lakes Center for Freshwaters and Human Health, co-funded by NSF and NIH. Dick's lab uses field, lab, and bioinformatic methods to study microbial communities and their role in the environment and human health. They focus on cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms, which threaten freshwater ecosystems and drinking water supplies globally. By integrating multiple omics approaches (genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics) with experiments in the lab and the field, they seek to understand how environmental conditions and biological interactions shape the dynamics and toxicity of cyanobacterial blooms. They use the Great Lakes as a natural laboratory with the aim of informing environmental predictions and policy and protecting human health.