Turns out it is really hard to stay away from Montreal and I ended up moving back in late 2021 to start a PhD with Dr. Laura Pollock at McGill University. 

After returning to Montreal, Covid-19 meant the rest of my degree would have to be remote. So, naturally, I moved to beautiful Vancouver BC, where I worked on publishing my thesis, securing a PhD position, and freelancing as a data analyst/graphic designer for local organizations. 

I figured the best way to understand range expansion was to go observe one! So I organized and co-led a 3 month field season studying the impacts of invasive pine spread on plant-fungi interactions in alpine Patagonia, Argentina. Field work entailed 1.5 months of backcountry camping atop Cerro Piltriquitron, a mountain just east of El Bolson, Rio Negro. 

Returning from New Zealand, I decided to start a MSc at Concordia University, where I worked on understanding how species shifting their ranges impact native community biodiversity.

Shifting hemispheres, I helped researchers at the Cawthron Institute in Nelson, NZ, quantify the affect of invasive fanworm establishment on biodiversity in soft sediment marine communities. Despite only staying for 3 months, I met some incredible people who inspired me and continue to fuel my scientific curiosities from a continent away! Check out the publication that illustrates my research here!

After finishing my undergraduate at McGill, I was able to publish my thesis in Dr. Cristescu's bioinformatics lab as first author!  This experience, as well as the incredible opportunities to engage and interact with biology throughout my degree, really inspired me to pursue a MSc! Check it out here!

Briefly for the summer of 2017 I worked to develop McGill Redpath Museum digital collections to fuel new online and virtual exhibits. I got to interact with a lot of their collections, highlighting the incredible diversity in artefacts at Redpath. You can see more of the digital collections here! 

Fulfilling my childhood dream, I helped out with some paleontological field work for Dr. Hans Larsson in McGill's Redpath Museum during the summer of 2017. For just over a month, we toured around southern Sasketchewan and Alberta, conducting fieldwork, and digging up dinos!

I spent 2 months on Sweden's west coast identifying marine invertebrates at Uppsala's Klubban Biological Field Station. Still not an expert in polychaetes but im getting there... 

I had the incredible opportunity and privilege to study rainforest disturbance and biodiversity in the rainforests of Xishuangbanna, Yunnan Province, China. Specifically, I looked at the impact of light disturbance (canopy openings) have on leaf complexity of understory vegetation. Made some incredible friends, both human and red panda! 

Spent some of the summer of 2015 canoeing around lakes and watersheds in southern Ontario searching for Decodon verticillatus. Commonly known as swamp loosestrife, this shrubby perennial shifts from a sexual to clonal lifecycle as it approaches its northern range limit.