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 a biochemistry student interested in learning about neuroimmunology. She is assisting Hitasha Bajaj in exploring the relation between early-life stress and glucocorticoid regulation in the brain. Carmen is also optimizing an immunohistochemistry protocol for fresh frozen tissue.

Ching is a BSc student completing her degree in Biology with a minor in Oceanography. Ching is working with Hitasha Bajaj and looking at mechanisms of enzymatic microglial interactions and glucocorticoid synthesis in the brain as a result of early life stress. She is also optimizing a technique for the extraction of sequenceable RNA and steroid data from the same tissue sample.

Emily is an undergraduate Neuroscience student. She is assisting Michelle in investigating the effects of maternal sucrose intake on offspring physiology and behaviour. Emily is specifically interested in studying the effects of diet on the offspring’s stress response and how biological factors influence the expression of affective disorders.

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.

Hriday is a cellular neuroscience student looking into the impact of diet on steroid hormone regulation. He is working with Michelle to study the effects of maternal sugar consumption on offspring behavior and local steroid production.

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.

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.