Exploring Biological Frontiers Together

My first degree was in Marine Biology at the University of Guelph. I had a large fascination with ocean life and biodiversity. I was also an avid scuba diver. While at Guelph, I worked at the University during the summers at the Ontario Veterinary College for a pathologist who worked strictly on marine mammals. I had worked with grey seals (very large animals) which Guelph had on campus at the time. I was doing blood biochemistry as well as electron microscopy on seal adrenal tissues. Working with seals peaked my interests in breath holding, bradycardia, and everything associated with hypoxia. I had taken Biochemistry as an undergraduate, but found the course notoriously difficult and did not have an appreciation for the subject at the time. It was not until my fourth year as an undergraduate where I took a course on how marine organisms adapt their own biochemistry to survive environmental extremes (high temperature heat, hypoxia, freezing cold, changes in salinity, etc.). This was a turning point for me. I saw stress not only in Basic Science terms (survival of environmental extremes) but also in
Clinical Science terms (survival of bacterial and viral infection, survival of extreme trauma, wound healing, disease states, etc.) and Biochemistry became VERY relevant!

I did my Doctoral degree at Carleton University in Biochemistry and had to learn more about the topic. I worked with Canadian turtles (red eared sliders) that can go without air for up to four months (they do this in their natural hibernating state during winters). Their secret is that they can shut their metabolism down to undetectable levels during hibernation. Knowing that humans do not have this ability, I was more interested in human biochemical adaptation and moved on to do postdoctoral work on human cells. I did my Postdoctoral work at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts; a hospital affiliated with Harvard Medical School. There I worked on how human cells “sense” a change in oxygen (especially during hypoxia) and was part of an international race to find out what the human “oxygen sensor” was. Harvard was a unique environment that was ideal for academic study and research; an area where you can ask the world experts your questions that you had and receive their advice and knowledge.

Today, I am continuing my work on the Biochemistry of oxygen sensing in relation to health and disease with a focus on tissue remodeling at Carleton University. Our interests are how oxygen is involved in lung fibrosis and tumor formation. This has allowed me to collaborate with tissue engineers, health scientists, physicists, chemists and clinical researchers. Overall, my life has been an incredible journey and it is my hope that students everywhere have similar experiences that are just as incredible. My advice to everyone is to “follow your interests” and “never let go of your goals” within these interests, no matter how difficult the pathway to them becomes.