Research Assistants

Alex is an undergraduate student majoring in Behavioural Neuroscience. She is assisting Megan by examining how various steroids, mainly estrogens, affect the motivation to exercise in rats. 

Anna is a BSc student pursuing a degree in Honours Behavioural Neuroscience. Anna is currently assisting Melody Salehzadeh in exploring the production of glucocorticoids in lymphoid organs and brain using tissue culture, qPCR and LC-MS/MS. She is also working on an Honours project to measure enzymatic activity in rat placenta.

Bella is an undergraduate student studying Neuroscience. She is interested in learning more about avian behaviours. Bella is currently assisting Jérôme Plumier in investigating the changes in neurosteroid levels in blood, plasma, and brain tissues and their impact on the year-round aggression in song sparrows. 

Carmen is currently pursuing a BSc in Biochemistry. She is assisting Hitasha Bajaj in exploring the relation between early-life stress and microglia on glucocorticoid synthesis in the brain.

Ching is a second year BSc student completing her degree in Biology. Ching is working with Hitasha Bajaj and looking at mechanisms of glucocorticoid synthesis in the brain as a result of early life stress as well as microglial interactions.

Emma is pursuing her BSc in Honours Animal Biology. She assisted Sofia Gray with investigating neurosteroid production and territorial aggression in juvenile song sparrows and developed a method to measure sex steroids in song sparrow adrenal glands, gonads, and other tissues. Emma is currently validating a procedure to measure the activity of steroid synthesizing enzymes in the song sparrow brain.

Garrett completed his BSc in Cell and Developmental Biology (honours). Garrett is interested in how changes to the gut microbiome impact health. He is currently assisting Dr. Jordan E. Hamden and Dr. Désirée R. Seib with the bioinformatic analysis of their current projects.

Jathin is an undergrad student pursuing a BSc in the Cognitive Systems: Cognition and Brain program. He is currently assisting Megan with her wheel-running study and how brain steroids play a role in the motivation to exercise in rats.

Karnvir completed his BSc in Chemistry, Biology, and Earth and Ocean Sciences in April 2022. He is looking to pursue a graduate program next year related to medicine or immunology. Karnvir is currently working to understand how to use the LC-MS/MS technique with Dr. Asmita Poudel and hopes to work on his own study soon.

Lily is an undergraduate student studying the effects of maternal sucrose intake on offspring neurodevelopment.

Marwa is a 4th year undergraduate student pursuing an honours in Animal Biology, and a minor in Psychology. She is working alongside Michelle for her honours project which looks at the effect of maternal sucrose consumption on maternal serum and amniotic fluid.

Michael is a BSc student who is interested in neuroscience and immunology. He is working with Melody Salehzadeh and examining regulation of immunosteroid synthesis using qPCR and LC-MS/MS.

Ruolan completed her B.Sc. in Anatomy and Cell Biology (honours) at McGill University in 2019. She is now assisting Melody Salehzadeh and investigating the effects of an acute immunological stressor on immunosteroid production. Specifically, Ruolan is examining the local regulation of glucocorticoid levels in the mouse thymus through qPCR.