Simpson Lab - Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Canada

Alastair G.B. Simpson (B.Sc. Sydney; Ph.D. Sydney) send an e-mail

Alastair is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at Dalhousie University, and a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIfAR), program in Integrated Microbial Biodiversity.

Martin Kolisko send an e-mail

Martin started his PhD in September 2005, after he finished his masters degree at Charles University in Prague. His PhD research is focused on the biodiversity and molecular phylogeny of the group Fornicata (e.g. Carpediemonas, retortamonads, diplomonads and enteromonads) which belongs within Excavata, and the impact of data from new Carpediemonas-like organisms on eukaryote phylogenomics. Martin is co-supervised by Andrew Roger in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Aaron Heiss <aaron.heiss [at thingy} dal.ca>

Aaron started his PhD in September 2006, after finishing a Masters Degree in Patrick Keeling's Lab at the University of British Columbia. He is examining deep-level eukaryote evolution from morphological and molecular phylogenetic standpoints. His major work at present is characterising the cytoskeleton of apusomonads and ancyromonads, poorly studied protozoa that appear to be an extremely deep branch in the eukaryotic tree: They are the 'bikonts' that are most likely to be closely related to the so-called 'unikonts' (i.e. opisthokonts, including animals and fungi, and the Amoebozoa).

Tommy Harding

Tommy is a PhD student based in Andrew Roger's lab, and co-supervised by Alastair Simpson. He is using a transcriptomic approach to examining the molecular evolution of extremely halophilic protozoa, and their molecular adaptations to coping with very high salt habitats.

Qianqian Zhang

Qianqian is a PhD Student from Weibo Song's Lab at the Ocean University of China. She is visting the Simpson lab as Research-stream Visiting Student, Graduate Studies (VSGS) from Sept 2010 - Feb 2012. Her research project is the detailed characterisation of a putatitvely deep-branching member of the anaerobic Preaxostyla clade (Oxymonads and Trimastix), and molecular phylogenetics of the Preaxostyla.

Kim Campbell

Kim started an honours project in January 2011. She is trialing targetted environmental PCR approaches to assess the diversity of uncultured Carpediemonas-like organisms (CLOs) in natural samples

Laura Little

Laura is an undergraduate student who helps to keep the lab running.

Jong Soo Park, PhD. send an e-mail

Jong Soo joined the lab as a postdoctoral fellow in November 2007, following a PhD at Seoul National University with Prof. Byung Cheol Cho, and a postdoc in Chonnam University. Jong Soo worked primarily on the biodiversity and biogeography of halophilic and extremely halophilic protozoa. He also examined halotolerant heterotrophic stramenopiles and performed detailed electron microscopy studies on two Carpediemonas-like organisms.

Jong Soo left the lab in February 2011 to take up a faculty position at Kyungpook National University, South Korea.

Jong Soo's Curriculum Vitae

Vladimir Hampl Ph.D. send an e-mail

Vladimir started his postdoctoral fellowship in January 2006 (co-supervised by Andrew Roger, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology), after he finished his PhD at Charles University in Prague. His research is focused on the phylogeny and mitochondrial evolution of Metamonada (Oxymonads, Trimastix, Carpediemonas, parabasalids, retortamonads, diplomonads) which belongs within Excavata. Vladimir returned to a faculty position in Prague in December 2007. Here is the webpage of his new lab.

Karla Grimm

Karla is joined the lab as an Honours Student for the 2009-2010 academic year. She examined the diversity and phylogeny of Percolomonas cosmopolitus, a morphosopecies with remarkable genetic diversity.

Greg McMullin

Greg worked in the lab as an NSERC summer student in 2008, and is continued in the lab in 2009-2010. He was working on protocols to assess the environmental diversity of Carpediemonas-like organisms, and helping with multigene phylogenies of cultured Carpediemonas-like organisms.

Abrar Neghaban

Abrar worked in the lab as a summer student in 2008.

Nicole White

Nicole worked in the lab as an NSERC summer student in 2007.

Laura MacDonald

Laura was an honours student for the 2006-2007 academic year. She examined possible cases of lateral gene transfer early within the evolution of excavates.

Tommy Perley

Tommy (right) was an honours student (2004-2005), and summer student reseacher (2005, 2006). He used multi-protein phylogenetics to help determine the evolutionary position of the mysterious jakobid (or jakobid-like) flagellates Andalucia godoyi and Andalucia incarcerata (formerly Jakoba incarcerata). This work was published in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution (Simpson, Perley and Lara, 2008).

Lori Goldberg

Lori was an honours student for 2005-2006, working on the diversity and evolutionary relationships among pelobionts, and their relationship to Entamoebae. She is now at Law School.

Danielle Matthews

Danielle is an honours student for 2005-2006. She is working on the deep-level evolutionary relationships amongst kinetoplastids, using both electron microscopy and molecular data. She worked for a time at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), and is now at Law School at Dalhousie University

Sarah Keefe

Sarah was an honours student for 2005-2006. She is characterising a virus that infects a small excavate flagellate.

Zahra Daftarian

Zahra was an NSERC summer student reseacher (2005). She characterised nuclear-encoded marker genes from deeply-branching relatives of the key excavate protozoan Malawimonas, and worked on culturing and cryopreservation of some of our collection of free-living protozoa

Enrique Lara Ph.D.

Enrique was a PhD student in Lausanne, Switzerland. supervised by Dr Chatznotas. Enrique visited the lab in the summer of 2004. He performed light and electron microscopy on a new small excavate flagellate, now called 'Andalucia godoyi' (Lara et al., 2006), that he had isolated from soil samples in Europe. Enrique looks very happy in this picture because he is defending his thesis.