Featured Postdocs
Spring 2020
Dr. Ainsley Lewis
Dr. Ainsley Lewis is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Professor RJ Neil Emery at
Trent
University where he studies the metabolomics of plant and bacteria
using high-resolution mass spectrometry. The project is a collaboration
between the Emery laboratory and NutriAg Inc. The project’s goal is to
produce a biofertilizer for augmenting plant growth. Dr. Lewis received
his PhD from Trent University in June 2021, with the President’s Medal
for the PhD, where he studied under Professor Céline Guéguen (now at the
Université de Sherbrooke). He used high resolution mass spectrometry to
characterize the microalga/euglenoid Euglena gracilis and applied this
microalga as a bioremediation tool to remove a critical rare earth
element from water. Hailing from the country of Jamaica, Dr. Lewis is
also an advocate for more representation of minority groups in STEM.
Keep in touch with Dr. Lewis on Twitter @chemicalfugue.
Dr. Purva Karia
Dr. Purva Karia is a postdoctoral scientist working with Dr. Sue Rhee and Dr. David
Ehrhardt at Carnegie Institution in Stanford, California. She is
working on the Sorghum Metabolic Atlas project to unravel the
localization and functions of sorghum metabolic enzymes. She received
her PhD under Dr. Keiko Yoshioka at the University of Toronto in 2021.
Her PhD research focused on the importance of Triphosphate Tunnel
Metalloenzyme 1 (TTM1) localization to the mitochondrial outer membrane
for its function in regulating senescence. She discovered that multiple
phosphorylation events of TTM1 regulate its function in senescence and
protein turnover. Outside of the lab, she enjoys camping, hiking,
baking, and visits to the dog park with her furbaby. Keep in touch with
Dr. Karia on Twitter @prkaria.
Dr. Lauren Erland
Dr. Lauren Erland is a Postdoctoral Research & Teaching Fellow in Dr. Susan
Murch’s PlantSMART Lab at UBC Okanagan. Dr. Erland completed her PhD in
2019 in Dr. Praveen Saxena’s lab at the University of Guelph, where she
focused on understanding the roles of the mammalian neurotransmitters
melatonin and serotonin in plants. Her research uses interdisciplinary
approaches such as plant tissue culture, metabolomics, analytical
chemistry, ecological niche modelling, and quantum dot microscopy to
study the role of plant growth regulators in plant perception and
response to changes in their environment. She is particularly interested
in how plant signaling can be applied to understand and predict climate
change resiliency of native Canadian plant species in the Okanagan
Valley and Canada’s Arctic (Inuit Nunangat). Dr. Erland is the Acting
Communications Director and Website Administrator with the CSPB. When
she is not in the lab she enjoys hanging out with her dog Piper and
being outside usually moving very slowly as she finds new plants along
the way! Keep in touch with Dr. Erland on Twitter and Instagram
@plantdrlauren and at www.laurenerland.com.
Dr. Mohamed Samir Youssef
Dr. Mohamed Samir Youssef is a research associate working with Prof. Claudio
Stasolla at the University of Manitoba. In 2010, he received his Ph. D.
from Tanta University in Egypt. His Ph.D. thesis focused on
micropropagation and somatic hybridization of Citrullus L. In 2013, he
joined the University of Kafrelsheikh, Egypt as an Assistant Professor
where his research focused on studying the genetic diversity of
economically important plants. Then he joined the lab of Prof. Stasolla
as a postdoctoral fellow in 2015 to study the role of corn phytoglobin
genes in the mitigation of soil flooding. He then joined the
Kafrelsheikh University as an Associate Professor in 2018. Mohamed
joined the lab of Dr. Claudio Stasolla in 2019 as visiting professor to
develop an experimental screen for evaluating drought and salinity
stress in soybean using morpho-physiological parameters, transcriptional
profiling and monitoring enzyme activity. His work improves our
understanding of the molecular mechanisms through which plants respond
to abiotic stresses. In 2022 Mohamed will join Dr. Robert Duncan’s lab
at the University of Manitoba as a research associate to work on a NSERC
Collaborative Research and Development project on High Erucic Acid
Rapeseed improvement. This work will involve genetic characterization
and manipulation of canola plants to determine the genetic control of
key traits. Spring 2021
Dr. Kyle Bender
Kyle Bender is a postdoctoral scientist working with Cyril Zipfel at the University of Zurich (UZH) in Sw
itzerland.
In 2013, he received his Ph. D. from Queen's University, where he
trained under Prof. Wayne Snedden. His Ph.D. thesis focused on
understanding how a subfamily of stress-regulated calmodulin-like
proteins mediate Ca2+-dependent
environmental responses. After his Ph.D. he carried out postdoctoral
work with Prof. Steven Huber and Raymond Zielinski at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During his time in Illinois, Kyle expanded
his research interests to include protein kinases and regulatory
phosphorylation. There, his work on Ca2+-dependent
protein kinases (CPKs) uncovered a novel role for phosphorylation in
priming CPK calcium sensitivity. In Zurich, he has continued to work on
protein kinase-mediated signaling, with a focus on understanding how
receptor kinase phosphorylation activates intracellular signaling after
perception of microbe-derived immune elicitors. While in Zurich, Kyle
has developed advanced protein biochemistry and proteomics skills
through training programs with state-of-the-art core facilities at UZH.
When he is not in the lab, Kyle spends his time hiking, playing board
games, and giving attention to his pug, 'Patti', and cat, 'Lilly', who
Kyle and his wife adopted from animal rescues in Europe.
Dr. Philippe Jutras
Philippe V. Jutras is an FRQNT postdoctoral fellow at the
University
of Oxford. He joined the lab of Prof. Renier van der Hoorn in 2017 to
study plant proteases and how to prevent unwanted proteolysis of
proteins. His research interests are driven by fundamental and applied
sciences, mostly related to the cellular and molecular biology of plant
cells. He aims at a better understanding of recombinant protein
expression in plants for molecular farming applications. For the past
ten years, he is committed to providing human vaccines and therapeutic
proteins produced from plant biotechnology. He obtained his PhD from
Laval University where his work focused on pH modulation in the plant
cell secretory pathway to stabilise complex recombinant proteins.
Concurrently, he worked with a pharmaceutical company to produce
plant-expressed virus-like particles used for the development of vaccine
candidates against the seasonal flu. He now works on understanding how
the plant host (mainly Nicotiana sp.) interacts with Agrobacterium tumefaciens
during plant transformation to increase protein expression efficiency.
His work has been supported by the research councils of Canada and
Quebec, and the industry. Philippe is also strongly motivated by the
fundamental principles of access to knowledge in science. He advocates
for ethical collaboration platforms in academia and supports open source
software.
Fall 2020
Wenlu Bi
Wenlu
Bi has been a postdoctoral fellow for the past three years at the
Gosling Research Institute for Plant Preservation (GRIPP) at the
University of Guelph. For her PhD, Wenlu already specialized in plant
cryopreservation and cryotherapy of grapevine with Dr. Qiaochun Wang at
Northwest A&F University in Yangling, China, in 2017. She created
technique to preserve plant germplasm resources and simultaneously
produce virus-free materials in Vitis
plants. Wenlu works as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Saxena on
establishing shoot-tip cryopreservation protocols for economically
important crops such as hazelnut and chestnut. She also develops
conservation strategies for several threatened and endangered plant
species, including Hill's thistle, Mingan thistle and Yukon Draba, which
are endemic to Canada. Her primary interest is in protecting and
recovering the wild plant species in their natural habitats in Canada.
She helps to mentor and support graduate students in developing their
experiments.
Narendra Singh Yadav
Narendra
Singh Yadav is currently a postdoctoral fellow working with Prof. Igor
Kovalchuk at the University of Lethbridge. His current research project
explores the effects of multigenerational stress exposure in plants. The
stressed lineages are studied for stress resilience via analyzing the
stress phenotype as well as genetic (WGS: Whole genome-sequencing) and
epigenetic (WGBS: whole-genome bisulfite sequencing) variation as
compared to their parallel and parental control. By completing this
project, he will determine if plants are able to transfer stress
modifications to their progeny, and if stress-induced microevolution at
genomic and epigenomic level occurs. Before coming to Canada, he worked
with Profs. Simon Barak and Gideon Grafi as a postdoctoral fellow at the
Jacob Blaustein Institute for Desert Research at Ben-Gurion University
of the Negev, Israel (2013 - 2018). In Israel, he worked in the field of
plant epigenetics to decipher its role in seed dormancy and abiotic
stress tolerance in Arabidopsis
and in regulating transposable elements, particularly during
stress-induced dedifferentiation. He received his Ph.D. (2013) in Plant
Biotechnology from the CSIR-Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research
Institute in Gujarat, India. During his Ph.D., he carried out research
in the molecular mechanisms of salinity tolerance in extreme halophyte Salicornia brachiata.
His Ph.D. work received international recognition and he was
interviewed by the prestigious science magazine "Scientific American".
Over his career, he has published more than 20 articles in reputed
journals and reviewed more than 50 manuscripts. Currently, he is
serving as a guest editor for two special issues. Apart from research,
he loves swimming which helps him to cope with routine life stress.
Solmaz Irani
Solmaz Irani is a postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Elizabeth Weretilnyk at McMaster University. Her
main research interest is to understand plant adaptation mechanisms to
unfavourable environmental conditions, which will help to improve crop
production under
increasingly variable climatic conditions. She graduated with a Ph.D.
degree from Department of Biology at the University of Saskatchewan in
September 2016, where she used a
combination of molecular, physiological and biochemical approaches to
study ureide compounds metabolism in response to abiotic stress in Arabidopsis. After her PhD, she did about a year of research in University of Saskatchewan on clubroot disease that forms galls in the roots of canola. At McMaster University, her focus is on Eutrema salsugineum which is an extremophile plant and a model system for stress-tolerance research in plants. Her goal is to understand the physiological and molecular mechanisms underlying the tolerance of Yukon ecotype of Eutrema to low phosphate availability.
Beyond science, Solmaz is a regular volunteer in “Plant Molecular Biology” workshops which are hosted by Dr. Weretilnyk’s lab for high school students. Solmaz has been one of the McCall MacBain postdoctoral fellows since Jan 2020. The program is a hands-on
scholarship on teaching and learning by training postdocs with
evidence-based teaching methods. Through the program, Solmaz has been
paired with Teaching Stream faculty members in the Department of Biology at McMaster University to co-lead a project to explore the long-term impacts of STEM Engagement workshops on high-school students and their teachers.
Valentin Joly
Dr. Valentin Joly is a postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Yannick Jacob at Yale University. While he was still finishing his B.Sc.
in life sciences at Pierre & Marie Curie University in France, he
moved to Canada for a short-term exchange program... and never came
back! In 2013, he joined Dr. Daniel P. Matton’s laboratory
at Université de Montréal with a Ph.D. project aiming at deciphering
the molecular causes of reproductive isolation in wild potatoes. Using a
dual approach combining RNA sequencing and proteomics, he analyzed gene
expression in reproductive tissues of Solanum chacoense and re-annotated the genome with 7000 new genes. He then identified candidate genes potentially involved in species-specific pollen-pistil interactions, in particular cysteine-rich
proteins (CRPs). He developed a bioinformatic sequence search tool,
KAPPA, dedicated to the detection and clustering of this peculiar
category of rapidly diverging proteins. In 2016, he was part of the ten
Canadian students selected for the Summer Program of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. This allowed him to join Dr. Testuya Higashiyama’s lab at Nagoya University, where he developed microfluidic devices tailored for pollen tube guidance
assays in Solanum, allowing to test candidate proteins. Right after
receiving his Ph.D. degree in August 2019, he joined the Jacob Lab at
Yale with an FRQNT postdoctoral fellowship. His new project aims at
optimizing the CRISPR/Cas9 technology and create large chromosomal
deletions within the Arabidopsis genome.
The goal is not only to take a step further towards the generation of
minimal plant genomes but also to reveal potential hidden functions of
repetitive DNA. More information can be found on his website (https://vjoly.net).