
Alex Cheslock
Alex is a Master’s student in the MacMillan Lab at Carleton University. Her general scientific interests involve the impacts of environmental stressors on animal physiology. Currently, she uses transcriptomics to study how microplastic ingestion alters insect gene expression. Outside the lab, you’ll find her reading, playing video games or listening to music.
Ella De Nicola
Ella is a first year PhD student co-supervised by Dr Heath MacMillan and Dr Kyle Biggar at Carleton University. Her research investigates the impact of low temperature on miRNA expression and the identification of candidate miRNAs that regulate insect thermal tolerance. Ella has a keen interest in small and non-coding RNA and the important role they play. Outside of the lab, Ella enjoys reading, cooking and music.


Emine Topcu
Emine is an MSc candidate at Dr. Tuan Bui’s lab at the University of Ottawa. She is doing computational modeling of larval zebrafish swimming speeds for her research. In addition, she is interested in providing computational tools to make scientific research easier. She is also a co-founder and contributor to the knowledge translation site “It’s All In Your Head”. On her non-academic side, she enjoys being a part-time musician.
Erica Vong
Erica is a PhD candidate in Dr. Rajendhran Rajakumar’s lab at the University of Ottawa. She is investigating the cellular, hormonal, and developmental genetic basis underlying mandible diversity within and across species in ants. She is part of BioMatters, a graduate-run Department of Biology magazine. Outside of the lab she enjoys watching movies and the visual arts (check out her art portfolio here)!
