My Academic Journey

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I am currently an assistant professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Science at McMaster University, and I've been here since 2021! You can read more about my teaching, research, and outreach.

The photo on the left was taken during a lecture on epigenetic gene regulation for LIFESCI 2G03: Genes, Genomes, and Society

In 2020, I completed my postdoctoral research fellowship at the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) Research Institute in Toronto, ON (Canada). In short, I studied how probiotics might be used to prevent a gut-related illness in premature babies called necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC).

There were 2 main goals of my postdoctoral research:

1. To investigate whether different lactic acid-producing probiotics prevent NEC in mice; and
2. To determine the molecular mechanisms by which different Lactobacillus probiotics regulate intestinal epithelial cell differentiation and stem cell activity.

The photo on the right was after my poster session at the Canadian Digestive Disease Week (CDDW) conference in 2020. 

In 2017, I earned my Ph.D. in molecular cell biology with a focus on intestinal homeostasis and disease at McMaster University (Hamilton, ON, Canada). Central to my Ph.D. research was studying how a transcription factor called "Kaiso" led to chronic intestinal inflammation and defective cell differentiation when over-expressed in transgenic mice.

My doctoral work showed that:

• Kaiso interacted with regulatory elements in the promoters of Notch signalling pathway genes, down regulating their expression, and directly leading to cell differentiation defects in these mice.
• Kaiso over-expression inhibited the expression E-cadherin prior to the onset of intestinal inflammation. A working model is that this weakens the intestinal barrier, thus increasing the risk of subsequent inflammation in Kaiso over-expressing mice. 

The photo on the left shows me setting up a luciferase assay for my Notch manuscript.

I completed my Honours Bachelor of Science from the University of Toronto (St. George), where I specialized in developmental biology and minored in French as a Second Language. The focus of my undergraduate thesis was to investigate the role of a protein called Cad99C in regulating microvilli morphology in Drosophila melanogaster.

The image on the right is of my family & I at my convocation from U of T.