Contacts

Dr. Nissimov is an environmental microbiologist and an aquatic virus ecologist. His focal points of interest are elucidating the interplay of hosts and their viruses in the context of aquatic biogeochemistry and energy flow, discovering aspects of algal-virus co-evolutionary processes and mechanisms of host resistance, and revealing the effects of environmental change on the fate of ecologically important viruses. He has a keen interest in also developing new host-virus model systems, and investigating the applied potential of viruses.

Delaney is co-supervised by Dr. Nissimov (main supervisor Dr. Trevor Charles). She joined Nissimov’s research group in January 2021. Delaney attained an undergraduate and Master’s degree in Biology from the University of Waterloo. During her undergraduate degree, Delaney specialized in plant biology and bioinformatics.  In her Master’s degree, Delaney studied protein trafficking in plant cells and became interested in learning diverse molecular biology techniques.  Now in her PhD work, she continues to explore molecular biology techniques such as viral genome sequencing and using environmental viral detection methods. Her research aims to detect viruses in hydroponic solutions that cause devastating crop losses, as well as tracking the spread of SARS-CoV-2 variants in wastewater.

Delaney is an avid knitter and designs her own clothing patterns. She also spends lots of time outdoors with family and enjoys camping and cottaging.

Cody graduated from the University of Waterloo with a degree in Biology. He first became interested in viruses due to their impact on human health but grew to appreciate their incredible diversity and ubiquitousness in nature. Cody has a passion for teaching and has been a TA for introductory Microbiology classes.

When he’s outside of the lab, Cody can be found playing guitar, rock climbing, or playing video games with friends. Recently, he’s become interested in building computers, and completed his first build during the COVID-19 lockdown. Cody joined Nissimov’s research group in the fall of 2020 as a MSc graduate student. His project investigates the diversity of viruses associated with harmful algal bloom (HAB)-forming species, and the role that viruses may play in the control of HABs.

Isaac is co-supervised by Dr. Nissimov (main supervisor Dr. Trevor Charles). He is pursuing his MSc in Biology after graduating from the University of Waterloo with a BMath in Combinatorics & Optimization. His research is centred around developing tools for primer design and analysis of viral genome sequencing data. In particular, he is investigating how to make use of incomplete genomic sequencing data from SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater.

Isaac enjoys learning about the ingenuity of viruses and how we can use their genomes to understand them. Besides learning about biology and computer science, Isaac also likes reading, exploring cities, watching hockey, and acting in plays.

Olivia is a Biomedical Science undergraduate student. She joined Nissimov’s research group as a volunteer in the fall of 2020. Olivia is the Literate Database Curator of the group. She plays an important role in finding relevant peer-reviewed literature related to on-going and future projects and in organising it in an accessible manner. She is also helping in the maintenance of our numerous microalgal, cyanobacterial and virus isolates.

Isaac is an international Honourss Biology student from the Universidad de las Américas Puebla (UDLAP). He has been carrying out research on microalgal biotech and applied symbioses for wastewater treatment since 2019. He developed an immediate interest for viral ecology and evolution from his very first Biology course. In the summer of 2022, after winning a Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Award, he joined Dr. Nissimov’s lab to work on the isolation of new cyanophages from Canadian lakes, assisting with the preparation of samples from the field for molecular work and flow cytometry, and the quantification of some of our existing virus isolates.

He likes reading about viruses from all three cellular domains, origins of life research, siphonous algae, and open thermodynamic systems that make imperfect copies of themselves. He enjoys food, beer, working out and walking in forests.

Sally is a Biology undergraduate student. She joined Nissimov's research group in the winter of 2022 on a Biol 499 project. The main focus of her project is to determine if certain strains of cyanobacteria produce bioactive compounds against a variety of algal viruses.

Outside of the lab, Sally enjoys practicing figure skating and archery. She also enjoys long nature walks, cooking, and playing video games either by herself or with friends.

Victoria was an undergraduate student in the Biomedical Science program and graduated in spring 2022. She became interested in viruses through taking microbiology courses and joined Dr. Nissimov's research group in the fall of 2021 as a BIOL 499 student. Her project explored the relationship between the viral infection of harmful algae and the release of toxins from cells.

Outside of school and lab, Victoria is a ballet dancer, enjoys reading novels, participating in water activities like snorkelling and diving, as well as skiing in the winter.

Briallen is a Postdoc at the Doxey lab. She did her undergraduate degree in Biochemistry and her PhD in the Biology Department at the University of Waterloo. Her PhD was broadly specialized in bioinformatics, with her thesis titled "Exploring annotation through genomic and metagenomic data mining". This functional annotation background was useful in Briallen’s short association with the Nissimov group, where she pieced together a more complete picture of the functional profile of large marine algal viruses, whose proteomes are full of unannotated sequences.

Anson is a Biomedical Engineering student at the University of Waterloo. As an undergraduate researcher on co-op with Dr. Nissimov’s group, his project utilized computational tools to conduct and examine pan-genome analyses of marine viruses.

Anson is also particularly interested in the roles of bioengineering and of interdisciplinary approaches in mitigating and adapting to the world’s virological and ecological problems. In his free time, Anson enjoys listening to and playing music, playing sports like volleyball or basketball, going down Wikipedia rabbit holes, and asparagus farming.