Staff
Trevor Charles
Principal Investigator
Alyssa Overton, MSc
Lab and Project Manager
Managing wastewater based research and surveillance projects including for viral targets, AMR discovery and untargeted metagenomic sequencing. Lab managing - contact for lab-upkeep related queries and requests.
Jenn Knapp, MSc
Microbiology Research Coordinator
Jenn organizes research projects and associated data, maintains archived lab data, performs data analysis, outlines project objectives, writes research grant applications, and generally supports graduate students, undergraduate students, staff members, and other lab members throughout their projects.
Julie Eliene Hernandez Salmeron
Genomics Researcher
Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Fellows
Zainab Ayinla, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Sherry Azeez
MSc Student
Co-supervised by Dr. Andrew Doxey
Eugenia Dadzie
PhD Candidate
Eugenia’s research focuses on petrochemical plastics biodegradation. Her goal is to engineer Pseudomonas putida strains capable of degrading polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastics as well as utilize PET plastics as feedstock for the production of PHA bioplastics. She is also pursuing an MBET degree.
Chaeyun Kang
MSc Student
I am a research assistant in the Charles Lab working on plant growth promoting Pseudomonas strains. My work focuses on characterizing the molecular basis of plant growth promotion in Pseudomonas strains MBI-RS1 and MBI-RS2. I study gene expression patterns associated with plant beneficial traits and integrate genes into other Pseudomonas strains to evaluate their function and contribution to plant-microbe interactions.
Su-Hyun Kwon
MSc Student
Hi everyone! I’m Su, a MSc student in the Charles Lab. My research focuses on functional metagenomics discovering novel antimicrobial resistance genes in Agrobacterium pathogen using Wastewater DNA libraries
Zjardyn Liera-Hood, M. Binf.
PhD Candidate
Zjardyn is a PhD candidate in the Charles and Hug Lab. He completed his B.Sc. in Genetics and a course-based Master’s in Bioinformatics at the University of Guelph. His research combines bioinformatics, microbial ecology, and machine learning, and he enjoys complementing his computational work with wet lab microbiology.
Zjardyn’s research focuses on plastic biodegradation in Rhodococcus species. He also leverages his background in molecular genetics and bioinformatics to understand the effects of microplastics in freshwater ecosystems.
Minghui Ma
PhD Candidate
Currently working on developing and implementing a versatile nanoparticle-based immunodetection system to reduce the concentration/enrichment time and enhance the detection sensitivity of E. coli in water systems. This user-friendly detection method only requires a magnetic field and a spectrometer, which makes it applicable in diverse geographical locations, especially where facilities are limited.
Ally Miners
PhD Student
Ally Miners is a PhD student in the Charles Lab focusing on plant-microbe interactions. She began at UWaterloo in her undergrad in 2018 and transferred from her MSc to PhD in 2025. Ally is passionate about working in a multidisciplinary field and hopes to commercialize her research in the future. Her work focuses on optimization of microbial inoculants to improve plant stress tolerance. By applying plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB) she hopes to mitigate drought stress in field soybean as well as disease pressure in hydroponic tomato.
Vanessa L Navabi
MSc Student
Yusra Nazneen
PhD Student
Co-supervised by Dr. Andrew Doxey
Nicole Schulz
PhD Candidate
Aranksha Thakor
PhD Candidate
Shahrzad Zahedifar
PhD Student
Co-supervised by Dr. Andrew Doxey