Many undergraduate students gain valuable hands-on experience in environmental research through co-op placements, summer research technician positions, NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Awards (USRA), work-study programs, and volunteer opportunities. Within the group, co-op and USRA students typically contribute to one of three main areas: ecotoxicology, analytical chemistry, or COVID-19 wastewater surveillance. These roles provide training in a range of techniques, including fish physiology and toxicology experiments, high-resolution chemical analysis in our trace analysis laboratory, and molecular methods for pathogen and variant detection in wastewater.
Students play an active role in ongoing research projects, supporting activities such as field sampling, laboratory experiments, instrument analysis, and data processing and interpretation. This experience provides exposure to interdisciplinary environmental science and helps develop technical skills, critical thinking, and scientific communication.
We are grateful to the many students and volunteers who have contributed to our research over the years; there are too many to list individually here.
In addition, a number of Honours undergraduate thesis projects (BIO 499 or CHEM 494) are completed within the group each year. These projects provide students with the opportunity to conduct independent, focused research under supervision and often contribute directly to larger ongoing research themes within the lab. A list of these thesis projects is provided in the table below.
Honour's Undergraduate Theses
| Student | Project title | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Kathryn Williams | Recovery and partitioning of respiratory viruses in wastewater. | 2024 |
| Ken Bingham | Measuring and optimizing the encapsulation efficiency of iohexal in liposomes. | 2023 |
| Alice Gere | 229E and MHV recovery analysis using RT-qPCR and dPCR. | 2023 |
|
Joud Abu Farah |
Assessment of Fecal Indicators for Wastewater Surveillance of COVID-19. | 2022 |
| Sarah Kowalczyk | Development of a fish tissue extraction method for pharmaceuticals that is unbiased with respect to enantiomeric selectivity. | 2022 |
| Avneet Kaur | The influence of chirality on the uptake of venlafaxine in Fathead Minnow. | 2021 |
| Christine Neilson | Impact of an abandoned natural gas well on the aquatic ecology of Big Creek. | 2020 |
| Erika Burton | Sediment suspension as an inhibitor for eDNA detection. | 2020 |
| Courteney van Ballegooie | Comparison of the performance of cleavable molecular beacon and a mercury specific oligonucleotide probe. | 2016 |
| Alexandra Crichton | Determining the effect of municipal wastewater effluent on the spawning behaviour of rainbow darters (Etheostoma caeruluem) in the Grand River. | 2012 |
| Rose Bendix | Effects of the dietary exposure of 1,2Bis(2,4,6-tribromophenoxy)-ethane and a commercial polybrominated diphenylether mixture (DE-71) on juvenile snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentine) somatic, behavioural, and biochemical endpoints. | 2011 |
| Brendan Knight | The impact of wastewater on stable isotope signatures in aquatic biota in the Grand River. | 2009 |
| Andrew Tin | Effect of fluoxetine (Prozac) on the performance of hatchling snapping turtles. | 2009 |
| Lin Li | Effect of sewage effluent on the Vtg induction in fathead minnows. | 2009 |
| Jill Hendrix | Endocrine disruption in fathead minnows exposed to sewage effluents. | 2007 |
| Tyler Mitchel | Effect of sewage effluent on the performance of hatchling snapping turtles. | 2005 |
