I have a special interest in environments in which nutrients, energy and biomass are scarce, and life is potentially operating at its limits. The overarching goal of my research is to better understand the cell life cycle strategies and genomic mechanisms that shape microbial community structure and function in such extreme environments. Understanding the limits of life is important on Earth, but also helps inform how and where we look for life elsewhere – in our solar system and beyond. Many of the environments I study, and questions I ask are related to the fascinating field of Astrobiology. Check out a talk I have given at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences here on how we can learn from microorganisms on Earth, to inform the search for life elsewhere.
Previously, my research as a NSF CDEBI Postdoctoral fellow at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean sciences employed highly sensitive assays to fluorescently tag microorganisms at the single cell level that are translationally active (making new proteins), actively respiring, and dead and viable cells; I combined these methods with single cell sorting, to associate genomics with these physiological cell states in the environment. This ongoing work examines questions of microbial activity in deep marine oceanic crust. Please see the Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations (CDEBI) for more details about this program!
Other continuing projects include work as part of a Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia Postdoctoral fellowship, where I began researching the fate of ancient permafrost carbon as it enters the marine environment due to coastal permafrost erosion.
Please feel free to contact me about my research, or any other questions. Please feel free to request PDFs of my publications ( Link to Google Scholar).
EDUCATION
2016 Ph.D., Environmental Microbiology, McGill University
2010 MSc., Molecular Ecology, University of Toronto
2008 H. B.Sc., Cell and Molecular Biology, University of Toronto
POSITIONS
07/2020 – present Assistant Professor, School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph, ON, Canada
07/2020 – present Adjunct Associate Research Scientist, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, NY, USA
2019 – present Adjunct Principle Investigator, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, ME, USA.
2019 – 2020 Postdoctoral Research Fellow – Advisor Dr. Andy Juhl, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, NY, USA
2016 –2019 Postdoctoral Research Fellow – Advisor Dr. Beth Orcutt, Deep Biosphere Laboratory, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, ME, USA.
2016 – 2016 Postdoctoral Research Fellow – Advisor Dr. Lyle Whyte, Department of Natural Resource Sciences, McGill University, QC, Canada.