Avril Metcalfe-Roach
Doctor of Philosophy in Microbiology and Immunology (PhD)
Interplay between diet and the microbiome in Parkinson's disease
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A diverse range of highly ranked programs
With access to master’s and doctoral degrees through nine departments and 350 research groups, our graduate students work with world-class faculty to explore the basic sciences, and to pursue interdisciplinary and applied research across departments and units. UBC’s research excellence in environmental science, math, physics, plant and animal science, computer science, geology and biology is consistently rated best in Canada by international and national ranking agencies.
Committed to outstanding graduate training
UBC Science houses a wide range of prestigious NSERC Collaborative Research and Training Experience and related industry programs: from atmospheric aerosols to high-throughput biology, from biodiversity research and ecosystems services to plant cell wall biosynthesis, from quantum science and new materials to applied geochemistry. The options for enriched graduate training in industry related fields are almost endless.
World-class research infrastructure
Our affiliated institutes and centres include UBC's Michael Smith Laboratories, Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute, Biodiversity Research Centre, Life Sciences Institute, Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences, Mineral Deposit Research Unit, and TRIUMF, Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics.
Top research talent
UBC Science boasts more than 50 Canada Research Chairs, 12 fellows of the Royal Society of London, and has been home to two Nobel Laureates. Our graduate students have won 15 prestigious Vanier Scholarships.
A diverse, supportive community of scholars
UBC Science is committed to excellence, collaboration and inclusion. Women account for 41 per cent of the Faculty's graduate enrollments, and the percentage of international students has increased to 50 per cent over the past decade.
Biodiversity, Evolution and Ecology
Computational Sciences and Mathematics
Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences
Genomics and Biological Sciences
Human-Computer Interaction
Life Sciences
Chemistry and Materials Science
Physics
Sustainability
Designed to inspire collaboration and creativity across disciplines, the new Earth Sciences Building (ESB) lies at the heart of the science precinct on UBC’s Vancouver Campus. The $75 million facility is home to Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Statistics, the Pacific Institute of the Mathematical Sciences, and the dean’s office of the Faculty of Science. ESB’s updated teaching facilities will help Canada meet the challenges of a transforming and growing resource sector. Just as importantly, the researchers and students working and learning in the new facility will offer a valuable flow of well-trained talent, new ideas, and fresh professional perspectives to industry.
Receiving more than $120 million in annual research funding, UBC Science faculty members conduct top-tier research in the life, physical, earth and computational sciences. Their discoveries help build our understanding of natural laws—driving insights into sustainability, biodiversity, human health, nanoscience and new materials, probability, artificial intelligence, exoplanets and a wide range of other areas.
UBC Science boasts 50 Canada Research Chairs and 10 fellows of the Royal Society of London, and has been home to two Nobel Laureates.
Name | Academic Unit(s) | Research Interests |
---|---|---|
Jellinek, Mark | Department of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences | Volcanology, Geodynamics, Planetary Science, Geological Fluid Mechanics |
Jetter, Reinhard | Department of Botany, Department of Chemistry | Analytical Chemistry; Plant Ecophysiology; Plant Biochemistry; Molecular Genetics; Biological Chemistry |
Joe, Harry Sue Wah | Department of Statistics | Statistics; Statistics and Probabilities; copula construction; dependence modelling; extreme value inference; non-normal time series; parsimonous high-dimensional dependence |
Johnson, Mark | Institute for Resources, Environment & Sustainability, Department of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences | Geology; Natural environment sciences; Agriculture; Biogeochemistry; Carbon cycle; Climate Changes and Impacts; data science; Ecohydrology; Ecology and Quality of the Environment; Fresh Water; Ground Water and Water Tables; Hydrological Cycle and Reservoirs; Land and Soil; land use; Running Water Hydrosystem; Water and Sustainability |
Johnson, Pauline | Department of Microbiology & Immunology | Diseases of the Immune System; Immunology; Inflammation; Immune-cancer interactions; Innate immunity; Macrophages and myeloid cells |
Johnson, Catherine | Department of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences | Lunar geophysics, Evolution of Mars' Magnetic Field and Atmosphere |
Jones, David | Department of Physics & Astronomy | Atomic, optical and molecular physics,Ultrafast Optics, Spectroscopy |
Karczmarek, Joanna | Department of Physics & Astronomy | Physical sciences; Emergent spacetime and gravity; Matrix models; Noncommutative geometry; String theory |
Karu, Kalle | Department of Mathematics | Algebraic geometry, toric varieties, log geometry, combinatorics of fans and posets |
Keeling, Patrick John | Department of Botany | Molecular evolution and cell biology of eukaryotes |
Kennedy, Lori | Department of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences | Geological science, structural geology, development of large-scale fault systems and shear zones, displacements, fluid-rock interactions, strain localization, confining pressure |
Kiczales, Gregor | Department of Computer Science | MOOCs, Blended Learning, Flexible Learning, University Strategy for Flexible and Blended Learning, Computer Science Education, Programming Languages, Programming languages, aspect-oriented programming, foundations, reflections and meta programming, software design |
Kim, Young-Heon | Department of Mathematics | Partial Differential Equations and Geometry |
King, Kayla | Department of Microbiology & Immunology, Department of Zoology | |
Kopylova, Maya | Department of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences | diamond ore deposits, Diamond exploration, petrology and volcanology |
Korthauer, Keegan | Department of Statistics | Bioinformatics; Genomics; Statistics; Epigenomics; Single-cell analysis; Statistical genomics |
Kremen, Claire | Institute for Resources, Environment & Sustainability, Department of Zoology | Natural environment sciences; Zoology; agroecological farming systems; Reconciliation of agricultural land use with biodiversity conservation; sustainable landscapes |
Krems, Roman | Department of Chemistry | Theoretical chemistry, Molecular Spectroscopy, Dynamics of few- and many-body molecular systems in electromagnetic fields |
Kronstad, James | Michael Smith Laboratories | Bioinformatics; Immunology; Microbiology; Plant biology; Mycology; Fungal diseases of plants; Genomics and Proteomics; Medical Mycology; Molecular Genetics; Pathogenesis of infectious diseases; Plant-Microbe Interactions |
Laba, Izabella | Department of Mathematics | Harmonic analysis, geometric measure theory and additive combinatorics |
Lakshmanan, Laks | Department of Computer Science | data management and data cleaning; data warehousing and OLAP; data and text mining; analytics on big graphs and news; social networks and media; recommender systems |
Leander, Brian | Department of Botany, Department of Zoology | Plant biology; Zoology; Comparative organismal biology; Evolutionary morphology; Evolutionary protistology; Marine biodiversity; Marine invertebrate zoology; Phylogenetic biology; Species discovery |
Lecuyer, Mathias | Department of Computer Science | Machine learning systems; Guarantees of robustness, privacy, and security |
Lemieux, Caroline | Department of Computer Science | Programming languages and software engineering; help developers improve the correctness, security, and performance of software systems; test-input generation; specification mining; program synthesis |
Lerner, Jackie | Environmental impact assessment; Land use and environmental planning; cumulative effects assessment; gender-based analysis |
This is an incomplete sample of recent publications in chronological order by UBC faculty members with a primary appointment in the Faculty of Science.
Year | Citation | Program |
---|---|---|
2023 | Counting sums and differences between sets is a central part of many questions in additive combinatorics. Dr. White developed a new technique combining harmonic analysis and optimization to nearly resolve a longstanding question in this field. He expects that his new method can be extended to other problems in additive combinatorics. | Doctor of Philosophy in Mathematics (PhD) |
2023 | Dr. Kim's research focused on mechanisms that reduce metabolic rate in small hibernating rodents. These comparative studies take us one step closer to understanding and utilizing naturally occurring biological phenomena for biomedical advancement. | Doctor of Philosophy in Zoology (PhD) |
2023 | Dr. Fink developed methods to convert CO2 or water into useful products using renewable energy. He showed that carbon capture can be directly coupled with CO2 electro-conversion to lower energy demands. He also demonstrated that hydrogen peroxide can be produced through electrochemistry to replace the current methods which consume fossil fuels. | Doctor of Philosophy in Chemistry (PhD) |
2023 | Dr. Anderson's research revealed ways in which the glacier runoff impacts water resources in Western Canada under climate change. He identified the communities in Alberta whose water supplies are most vulnerable to the loss of glaciers, and quantified how heat waves alter the timing and availability of water resources across BC and Alberta. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geophysics (PhD) |
2023 | Earthquakes represent the release of stress on faults, which occur in abundance in western British Columbia and Washington state due to convergence between North America and offshore oceanic plates.Dr. Merrill investigates several earthquake-dense regions in BC and Washington where fluids are interpreted to promote brittle failure. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geophysics (PhD) |
2023 | Dr. Nunez Bahena developed synthetic methodologies for accessing nitrogen-containing compounds by employing a catalyst based on an abundant metal, zirconium. | Doctor of Philosophy in Chemistry (PhD) |
2023 | Dr. Nguyen studied different roles of the nuclear localization signals in the life cycle of the Influenza A virus. She found these signals are important for the virus's nuclear import and nucleolus accumulation. Her findings deepen our knowledge of the influenza A virus's biology, which may lead to new pharmaceutical approaches for flu treatment. | Doctor of Philosophy in Zoology (PhD) |
2023 | Dr. Xing has been developing bioinformatic algorithms and tools for the unexplored tandem mass spectrometry data in untargeted metabolomics. In revealing the structural information of the undiscovered metabolome, his works paved way for revealing biological mechanisms behind various health disorders and diseases from the perspective of small molecules. | Doctor of Philosophy in Chemistry (PhD) |
2023 | Dr. Tummuru studied quantum materials that can be assembled from simple building blocks to unveil novel emergent properties. Experimental realization of the proposed structures could find use in the development of quantum technology. | Doctor of Philosophy in Physics (PhD) |
2023 | Dr. Natola studied the evolutionary process whereby 1 species splits into multiple different species using 3 hybridizing species of woodpeckers as a study system. She found the 3 species arose due to their environmental, behavioral, and genomic differences. Her study demonstrates evolutionary processes that have produced Canada's biodiversity. | Doctor of Philosophy in Zoology (PhD) |