About Me

From a very young age I knew I wanted to be a scientist. So it wasn't surprising when I started an undergraduate degree at the University of Ottawa in Biochemistry after high school. While I was completing my degree, I worked in an analytical chemistry lab at Health Canada with Dr Michel Girard. This experience certainly confirmed that research was right for me and I was able to contribute to two research articles. After graduating, I transferred into a molecular laboratory with Dr Mary Alice Hefford. There I learned how much I enjoyed working with DNA.

During my undergrad I discovered a passion for marine biology in a class called Animal Form and Function. I moved to Townsville, Australia, to pursue a Masters in which I combined marine and molecular biology. I evaluated Otx2 gene expression in clownfish that had imprinted to different odours, working primarily with Dr Lynne van Herwerden, Prof Phil Munday, and Dr Danielle Dixon. I also got an opportunity to work in collaboration with Prof Nicholas Cole and his lab at the University of Sydney as part of the project.

After my Masters, I led a phylogenetic study of Western Australian Stripeys while working as a research assistant for Dr Lynne van Herwerden. In addition, I was the manager for a large molecular ecology and evolution lab at JCU for 10 months.

I received the highly competitive IPRS scholarship at JCU to do a PhD with Dr Lynne van Herwerden, Professor Phil Munday and Associate Professor Bill Leggat. This also led to a long-standing collaboration wtih Professors Tim Ravasi and Michael Berumen from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. My thesis, "Molecular processes of thermal acclimation in a coral reef fish", evaluated the genes and cellular processes allowing a common reef fish either from higher latitude or across generations to acclimate to ocean warming.

One of my PhD chapters was published in Nature Climate change. After my PhD, I continued my work at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, evaluating genes in additional tissues (reproductive), different species, epigenetic processes and multiple species from the wild. I'm now doing a second Postdoctoral Fellowship at UofA to understand how cold-adapted species will be affected under climate change scenarios.