BIO

I was first introduced to the Arctic on an SOI expedition in 2011 funded by the Leacross Bern Foundation. The trip truly changed my life; drawing me back to the Arctic nearly every summer since. Currently, I'm an NSERC postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oslo studying Arctic plant genomics. I have spent six summers at Alexandra Fiord on Ellesmere Island (79 degrees north) in the Canadian High Arctic and three summers in the mountains of southwest British Columbia studying the effects of warming on tundra plant species.

 

My PhD thesis explored the genomes of several Arctic/alpine plant species. I looked at the biogeography of Cassiope tetragona (White Arctic Heather) sampled in 45 circumpolar locations, studied differential DNA methylation and gene expression of Dryas integrifolia (White Mountain Avens) plants from experimentally warmed and control plots across the Arctic and compared the genomes of four High Arctic species to their non-Arctic relatives. I also built a open source program (RepeatOBserver) to help bioinformatians predict likely centromere locations in non-model species. 

 

When not working, I enjoy hiking, back-country skiing, mountaineering, and working on alpine huts and trails. As a past president of the UBC Varsity Outdoor Club (https://www.ubc-voc.com/), I enjoy teaching people to backcountry ski and introducing students to glacier travel and basic mountaineering. From 2022-2024 I helped co-found the Nch'kay/Garibaldi alpine research site: https://garibaldialpine.wixsite.com/garibaldialpine . Currently, I'm a member of the steering committee for the International Tundra Experiment (https://www.gvsu.edu/itex/) and chair of the Arctic and alpine plants section of the Canadian Biogenomes Project.