Immigrant families settling the land, quilting bees, and ploughing matches are examples of some of the social and economic topics of early Ontario that link my work to the larger expertise of this University concerning agriculture and rural communities.
The problems I have worked on in animal science have direct implications for genetic selection, food quality (e.g. cow milk), and animal health. On the other hand, my work in understanding the structure and driving mechanisms of ecological (e.g. plant-pollinator) networks have indirect implications for ecosystem conservation, management, and restoration.
Studying the behavioural biology of cattle sheds light on how they see and experience the world, and ultimately offers us insight into their feelings. What drives their behaviour? How do the ways that we interact with them, house them, and manage them, impact their well-being? In our lab, answering these questions are fundamental to ensuring that the animals we farm, in this case cattle, live a good life.
My research looks at scales of local genetic adaptation to exotic Predators by Prey with high and low dispersal potential as well as ecological genomics and local adaptation of wild and aquacultural populations of Canadian Atlantic salmon.
My general research interests are interdisciplinary, and straddle the disciplines of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. Currently, I have particular interest in developing algorithmic solutions to optimization problems that arise in both FPGA and VLSI design flows. My other active areas of research include...
My group uses in vivo and in vitro models to ask how transcriptional regulators of the Dlx gene family influence cellular differentiation in the skeleton and craniofacial tissue patterning during vertebrate embryogenesis...
