Members

Expertise:

• Remediation technologies using chemical and photochemical techniques
• Wastewater and air treatment using advanced oxidation processes
• Infection and pathogen control, including rapid detection methods for bacterial contamination of water, automated UV disinfection systems, ultrasonic disinfection, and novel antimicrobial materials for use in clinical applications
   

Expertise:

• Complex biologics (products derived from living organisms or the organisms themselves)
• Baculovirus expression systems of complex biologics, including glycosylation and myritoylation post-translational modifications
• Cell culture monitoring, modeling and simulation – from metabolomics to on-line spectroscopy
• Monoclonal antibody production and modification, including enhancing monodispersity of the product
   

Expertise:

• Plant-microbe interactions
• Symbiotic nitrogen fixation in agriculture
• Functional metagenomics to look at the genomes of organisms present in complex samples such as soil
• Bacterial genome engineering for the production of bioproducts such as polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB)
• Synthetic biology, bioplastics and bioproducts

Publications:

Trevor Charles Publication List

Expertise:

• Chemical variations in teeth and what they reveal about the lives of their owners
• Dental anthropology, human osteology, bioarchaeology, paleonutrition and paleopollution, with a particular emphasis on reconstructing the experiences of children in the past
• Histological and microspatial chemical analyses (LA-ICP-MS, synchrotron) of ancient teeth and bones
• The human body and its shifting location in debates regarding ownership of biomaterials, sex/gender and sexuality, and the evolution of human behavioural universals

Expertise:

• Bioinformatics, computational biology and molecular genetics
• Predicting novel protein families and functions by combining sequence analysis with structural bioinformatics
• Predicting evolutionary adaptations in genes and genome by combining sequence analysis, phylogenetics and structural modeling
• Computational approaches to functionally annotate metagenomes and detect biologically relevant differences between them
   

Expertise:

• DNA replication, cell cycle checkpoints, molecular genetics
• Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model organism for cancer-related studies of the cell cycle
• Initiation of DNA replication including identifying and characterizing protein factors
• Cancer diagnostic markers for cell proliferation
   

Expertise:

• Bio-based production of glycolic acid, allowing for safer and more environmentally conscious cosmetics
• Microbial metabolism, including exploration of new methods to improve yields in synthetic biology
• Metabolic flux, looking especially at proteins, regulators, and pathways involved in microbial metabolism

Expertise:

• Protein structure and function
• Understanding of enzyme catalytic mechanisms including in methionine biochemistry and glyoxalase metalloenzymes
• Bio-nanotechnology including nanosized proteins as drug carriers and molecular foundations for nanodevices
• Bacteriophages to produce building blocks used in advanced biomaterials
• Interactions between biomolecules and nanomaterials
   

Expertise:

• Microbial diversity and function, especially at contaminated sites (primarily municipal landfills)
• Microbiome analysis (DNA, RNA and protein in metagenomics, metatranscriptomics and metaproteomics) from environmental samples
• Bioremediation tool development from exploration of microbial community interactions

Publications:

Laura Hug's Publication list

Expertise:

• Applications of systems and control theory to systems biology
• Design and construction of gene regulatory networks from forward-engineering of biological systems (synthetic biology)
• Modelling intracellular networks and heterogeneous cellular communities
   

Expertise:

• Molecular mechanisms of pathogenesis of communicable bacterial infectious diseases
• Public health prevention of infectious diseases through immunizations, appropriate health and hygiene practices, and harm reduction programs
• Pedagogy and cirrucular design with an emphasis on integrating active-learning methods into undergraduate courses

Expertise:

• Synthetic biology, including utilizing bacteria for production of chemical precurors and biofuels as well as environmental cleanup
• Biomining using iron/sulphur oxidizing bacteria
• Genetic analysis of new bacterial strains for applications in technology and the environment
• Improvements in PCR technology
• Bio-upcycling to transform waste via bacterial biosynthesis, with a focus on succinic acid

Expertise:

• Hyperthermophilic microorganisms growing at 80°C and above
• Microbial physiology and enzymology
• Alcohol and H₂ fermentation using novel enzymes that work at high temperatures
• Biocatalysis using thermostable enzymes for the production of chiral compounds
• High temperature biochemistry and protein engineering
   

Expertise:

• Modelling bacterial illness, including those from Salmonella and Shiga-toxin producing E. Coli
• COVID-19 infection mechanism and structure
• Biostatistics involving infection rates of microbes
• Analyzing the impacts of microbes on public health

Expertise:

• Proteomics analysis, that is, identifying and quantifying the proteins active within a biological system
• Computational and bioinformatics approaches for investigating protein function
• Quantification of cell cycle proteins in yeast, recombinant protein production in mammalian cell lines, and identification of proteins mediating plant-bacterial interactions
• Structural pattern recognition algorithms to predict protein functions such as carbohydrate binding and antifreeze activity
• Evolution of protein function within homologous protein groups
   

Expertise:

• Microbial carbonation reactions for carbon storage in mine tailings
• Microstucture and chemistry of microbial mats and stromatolites
• Electron and X-ray microscopy of microbial mats and their mineral precipitates
• Microbial nutrient acquisition in polar environments
• Bioremediation of mine waste materials

Expertise:

• Microbial fertilizers to enhance crop productivity and improve environmental footprint
• Bioplastics synthesized by microbes to reduce the negative environmental effects of conventional plastics
• Utilizing nanomaterials (polymers containing nanoparticles) as antimicrobial agents, with applications in healthcare, food processes and packaging, water disinfection, and antimicrobial coatings
• Biodegradable plastic synthesis, including altering bioplastics using byproducts of soymeal fermentation

Expertise:

• Membrane fouling and optimization of membrane filtration processes
• Diffusion transport in materials (e.g. biomaterials and polymeric films). Diffusing components - material interactions are analyzed through an experimental and theoretical study of model systems
• Enzyme reaction engineering - applications include foods, soil bioremediation, wastewater processes and biomaterial degradation phenomena
• Integrated extraction/purification processes for the recovery of proteins from plant materials (e.g. antifreeze proteins and soy proteins)
   

Expertise:

• World expert on Bangiales – types of red algae
• Red algae of economic importance - they contain compounds (agar, carrageenan, etc.) that are used extensively as thickeners in products such as yogurt, ice cream and toothpaste
• Red algae as food sources - genera such as Porphyra (aka. Nori, laverbread) and Palmaria (a.k.a. Dulse) are important food sources and are global billion-dollar aquaculture industries
• Red algae as a critical group in the evolution of photosynthetic life on earth through secondary endosymbiosis of chloroplasts
• Red algae as a nuisance - (e.g. Cladophora and Chara in Laurentian Great Lakes), invasive species (e.g. Bangia atropupurea in the Great Lakes)
• Cyanobacteria that release toxins and taste and odour compounds in drinking water (Lake Ontario)
   

Expertise:

• Microbial diversity - developing and applying molecular and computational methods to explore complex microbial communities spanning aquatic, terrestrial, and host-associated habitats
• Linking function and phylogeny - by exploring active microorganisms involved in transforming carbon and energy, to better understand who is doing what in the environment
• Nitrogen cycle - using a combination of molecular and cultivation approaches to investigate the microbial community members associated with ammonia oxidation and denitrification

Publications:

Josh Neufeld's Publication List

Expertise:

• Environmental microbiology
• Aquatic virus ecology
• Algal-virus interactions and co-evolution
• Giant virus diversity
• Carbon flow in marine environments

Publications:

Jozef Nissimov's publication list.

Expertise:

• Sustainable agriculture and agroforestry: food security, agrobiodiversity, climate change resilience, carbon sequestration, nitrogen transformations and greenhouse gas emissions in tropical, temperate and sub-arctic biomes
• Biochar: soil health, carbon sequestration, climate change resilience
• Waste to resources: closing the loop between food wastage and its ultimate use as a soil amendment
• Riparian (river bank) land-use systems in agricultural landscapes: determining carbon and nitrogen transformations in terrestrial and aquatic components of the river bank

Expertise:

• Exploring abilities of various bacteria to form resistance to widely used antibiotics, including colistin, polymyxin, and metronidazole
• Examining bacterial antibiotic resistance through a public health lens
• Microbial proteins that play a role in antibiotic resistance and microbial pathogenesis, especially considering Clostridioides difficile and Klebsiella sp.
• Relationships between various common antibiotics, concerning bacterial cross-resistance
• Sequencing of bacterial genomes to further understand antibiotic resistance across bacterial species

Expertise:

• Anaerobic membrane bioreactors for wastewater and sludge treatment
• Fate of emerging contaminants in wastewater systems
• Pretreatment of sludges for enhanced digestion
• Advanced sludge digestion processes
• Nutrient recovery from wastewater
• Modelling of wastewater treatment and sludge handling processes
   

Expertise:

• Cycling of key elements in lakes, rivers, forests and agricultural watersheds
• Impacts of climate change and agriculture on aquatic ecosystems
• Development and use of novel tracers, such as stable isotopes and artificial sweeteners, for following impacts on surface water and groundwater
• Indicators of climate change in high arctic and subarctic systems
   

Expertise:

• Determining ‘growth laws’ of bacteria through an understanding of genetic networks using mathematical physics and experimental microbiology

Expertise:

• Peatland greenhouse gas fluxes in both natural and disturbed ecosystems
• Potential impact of climate change on peatlands through plot to ecosystem scale manipulation of temperature and water table and evaluating the subsequent changes in soil properties, plant community and greenhouse gas fluxes
• Peatland restoration
• Peatland methane dynamics including both fluxes and subsurface storage
• Organic matter decomposition
   

Expertise:

• Bioresource engineering and biorefining
• Microalgae, metabolic engineering
• Ionic liquid based separations in biological systems
• Catalysis of wet biomass to biodiesel
• Isoprenoid production

Publications:

Valerie Ward's Publications