RESEARCH
Meet the Team
Dr. Ken Jeffries (he/him)
Principal Investigator
BSc (First Class Honours) – University of Calgary
MSc – University of Calgary
PhD – University of British Columbia
Postdoc – University of California, Davis
Ken is broadly interested in understanding how environmental stressors affect aquatic animals. His fundamental research focuses on understanding how temperature affects aquatic ectotherms and whether we can determine sub-lethal thresholds in responses to temperature that can predict when temperatures begin to cause fitness-level consequences. He is also interested in quantifying how contaminants in the aquatic environment can affect ectotherms. Most of Ken’s research uses different transcriptomic approaches to understand how environmental stressors affect animals at the cellular level and then integrating those responses across different levels of biological organization.
Joined 2023
Dr. Analisa Lazaro-Côté (she/her)
Postdoctoral Researcher
PhD - University of Calgary
Analisa is a Mitacs postdoctoral fellow investigating how thermal stress affects fish physiology and performance. Her research centers on using transcriptional profiling to aid in the conservation of wild bull trout in Alberta and the Northwest Territories, Canada. This work is conducted in collaboration with GEN-FISH, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and fRI Research. On a mechanistic level, she is examining the role of extracellular vesicles and their molecular cargo during thermal acclimation and stress.
Joined 2023
Dr. Alyssa Weinrauch (she/her)
Postdoctoral Researcher
BSc - University of Alberta
PhD - University of Alberta
Alyssa is a post doc in the Jeffries lab investigating transcriptional responses to environmental stressors. Her projects have included the design of the sea lamprey open array assay gene chip in collaboration with the Sea Lamprey Aquaculture and Procurement Initiative funded by the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. Further, she has been working with the GEN-FISH salmonid gene chip to investigate sublethal transcriptional thresholds of combined temperature and oxygen stressors on the lake trout.
Joined 2024
Dr. Aaron Boyd (he/him)
Postdoctoral Researcher
BSc - University of Calgary
PhD - University of Alberta
Aaron is an NSERC postdoctoral fellow investigating contaminant flow in the Canadian Arctic. His research uses softshell clams to quantify baseline levels of persistent and long-range transported chemicals in the environment that may be impacting country food sources for local communities. Additional objectives include developing DNA metabarcoding resources that will be used to monitor benthic invertebrates from intertidal and shallow subtidal habitats to establish local community structures that will serve as a baseline to monitor future changing conditions in the Arctic.
Joined 2021
Hossein Haghighi (he/him)
PhD Candidate
MSc - University of Tehran
Hossein is a Ph.D. student studying the effects of thermal stress on freshwater fish. He uses molecular and cellular techniques to investigate short- and long-term effects of thermal stress on developing fish. He has been developing a universal OpenArray™ chip for Acipenser sturgeons to investigate the transcriptomic response of these species to acute thermal stress. He also studies the effects of chronic thermal stress on the development of brain and muscle in zebrafish.
Joined 2022
Krista Robertson (she/her)
MSc Student
(co-supervised with Vince Palace at IISD-ELA)
BSc (Honours) – Queen’s University (Biology)
Krista is a master's student investigating how wastewater effluents and excess nutrients from inland fish farming affect the survival and stress response of fathead minnows. Her research is focused on using epidermal mucus tissues as a minimally invasive alternative for transcriptomic and proteomic analyses to understand how these stressors affect fish at the cellular level. This research is conducted in collaboration with the IISD – Experimental Lakes Area, Ontario Tech University, and the University of Saskatchewan.
Joined 2023
Raven Bennett (she/they)
BSc Honours Student
In Progress BSc (Honours) - University of Manitoba
Raven is an undergraduate student interested in how climate change affects epigenetics, physiology, and performance of freshwater fishes. In collaboration with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, her Honour’s thesis is investigating the effect of chronic thermal stress on gene expression and metabolic markers in bull trout. As an Indigenous scientist (Anishinaabe from Treaty 1), she seeks to braid Traditional Ecological Knowledge together with Western Science methodologies for the conservation and management of species at risk, and to bring Indigenous perspectives and practices into her research.
Joined 2024
Elli Hung (she/her)
Research Technician
BSc (Honours) - University of Toronto
Elli graduated from the University of Toronto with an Honours Bachelor of Science specializing in ecology and evolutionary biology, majoring in molecular genetics, and minoring in environmental science. She has worked with various lab groups focusing on understanding the transcriptomic response of aquatic organisms to multiple anthropogenic stressors. She is currently working as a research technician in the Jeffries Lab.
PAST MEMBERS
Post Doctoral Researchers
Dr. Shahinur Islam - (2021-2023)
Dr. Carol Best - (2022-2023)
Dr. Michael Lawrence - (2019-2021)
Dr. Jennifer Jeffrey - (2018-2021)
PhD Students
Thais Bernos - (2018-2023)
William Bugg - (2017-2022)
Matthew Thorstensen - (2018-2021)
MSc Students
Sonya Michaleski - (2019-2023)
Carolun Vandervelde - (2021-2022)
Christina Schaefer - (2019-2020)
Theresa Mackey - MSc (2020)
McKenzie Hauger - MSc (2020)
Josh Sutherby - MSc (2019)
Honours Students
Kayla Talabis - (2023-2024)
Jordan Kroeker - (2019-2020)
Danny Gedig - (2019-2020)
Michaela McKennitt - (2019-2020)
Scott Morrison - (2018-2019)
Hunter Carlson - (2017-2018)
Undergraduate Students
Taylor MacLeod - (2022)
Bronson Ramoutar - (2022)
Kyra Shewchuk - (2021)
Danny Gedig - (2020)
Michaela McKennitt - (2018, 2020)
Jordan Kroeker - (2020)
Kim Ta - CO-OP - (2019)
Cobi Wiwchar - (2018)
Technicians
Dejana Mitrovic - Wilfrid Laurier University (2019-2020)
Darren Foubister - Wilfrid Laurier University (2018)
Mike Gaudry - (2017-2018)