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Alexander completed his Ph.D. in Nutrition at Université Laval (Quebec, Canada), where he integrated microbiology, molecular biology, and nutrition to study how dietary trace minerals such as selenium, iron, and manganese influence the gut microbiome–endocannabinoidome axis and host metabolic health. He joined the Croitoru Lab in June 2025, where he investigates how dietary factors and gut microbial communities interact to shape inflammation and metabolic outcomes in Crohn’s disease. His project contributes to the GEM initiative, combining targeted isolation and characterization of gut microbes from stool samples with large-scale shotgun metagenomics and multi-omics profiling. Using integrative bioinformatics, statistical modeling, and machine-learning approaches, he aims to identify microbial and metabolic signatures and elucidate the biological pathways through which microbial metabolism, host nutrition, and immune regulation intersect to influence intestinal homeostasis and susceptibility to inflammatory bowel disorders.