Dr. Wheeler is Professor of Microbiology at the University of Maine and a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigator for the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease. He earned an AB in Biology at Harvard College, studied on a Fulbright Fellowship in Munich, Germany, and earned a PhD in Developmental Biology at Stanford University with Dr. Lucy Shapiro as a National Science Foundation GRFP Fellow. He performed post-doctoral research at the Whitehead Institute for Research in the laboratory of Dr. Gerald Fink. He joined the University of Maine in 2008 in the department of Molecular & Biomedical Sciences, where his laboratory studies the mechanisms behind Candida–host interactions, including discoveries of immune evasion through masking immune epitopes, host and pathogen determinants of fungal dissemination during disease, and understanding how fungi interact with myeloid innate immune cells in the live host. In 2016, he was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of Perugia, Italy. He served as President of the Medical Mycology Society of the Americas, is a Co-chair for the upcoming GRC on Fungal Immunology in 2027, and will be Co-Director for the Molecular Mycology course at MBL starting in 2026. His work was recognized by the University of Maine College Outstanding Research Award in 2022.