I’m excited to share some news with you. This year I was honoured to receive the Alice Wilson Award from the Royal Society of Canada! Alice Wilson was a geologist, and trailblazer for women in science. She was the first woman to be elected to the Royal Canadian Society of Canada. Women like Alice Wilson,...

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 They're only the size of your thumbnail, but Zebra and Quagga mussels could cause irreversible damage to Alberta's waterways. Although these mussels are not native to North America, they can hitch a ride on boats and other watercraft  from areas where they have successfully invaded, such as the Great Lakes and Mississippi Basin. A single female...

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HPI Adult Only Night at the Telus Spark On Thursday, January 14th, trainees from the Host-Parasite Interactions (HPI) Program hosted a “Party with Parasites” at the TELUS Spark Science Centre.  After regular hours at the TELUS Spark Centre, the Adults-Only Night was a special evening open for adults to get up close and personal with...

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In advance of the Society for Neuroscience conference in 2019, the Canadian Center for Behavioural Neuroscience (CCBN), located at the University of Lethbridge, is hosting a poster session to showcase the research of graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. My current research is showcased in the research poster below (I hope the text is large enough to read). Please feel free to contact me with any comments or questions. Enjoy!

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We announced it at a family gathering, via a shirt on our two-year old son: I am being promoted to big brother. Little did we know, through the congratulations, celebrations, and inevitable wondering about what the sex might be, that the baby was already dead.Technically, it was an embryo, but therein lies the dichotomy that I wrestled with throughout my miscarriage and beyond. Two versions of me responded to the same event. If I wasn't…

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Some local night owls pumping iron.  Are you an early riser, or a night owl? Given the timing of swim events at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, which frequently start at 10pm and don't wrap up until after midnight, the answer to this question may very well be on the minds of some athletes. It turns...

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Nearly two million years ago, an early hominid cooked the first steak, marking a turning point in our evolutionary history. Not only is cooked meat more easily digested and nutritious, but it is also sterilized of harmful pathogens. Nevertheless, there’s just something appealing about a rare steak, or fresh sushi. And when you’re shopping in...

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I research inflammatory bowel disease. A few days ago I started a new experiment, using human cells from a cell line called THP-1. Not being very familiar with these cells, I was interested in where they came from. The results of a Wikipedia search left me speechless. They are derived from the peripheral blood of a...

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Hymenolepis diminuta, the rat tapeworm You don’t want to let this one pass you by! Cozy and warm, with over 2700 square feet of living space. Comes fully furnished. Great place to raise a family, with on demand meal delivery services. Must be willing to contend with digestive juices, and bowel movements. It’s no surprise that...

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The last thing you might expect to greet your senses when you enter an art gallery is the pungent smell of feces. But that’s exactly what artgoers experienced when encountering conceptual artist Wim Delvoye’s exhibit, “Cloaca” in 2000. Cloaca is a digestive machine of impressive design; it was nearly a decade in the making, involving...

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