Past Lab Members

Dr. Félix Croteau

PHD 2018-2024 (BIOCHEMISTRY)

A graduate of Université Laval and veteran of the Moineau lab, he followed me to his new home at McMaster, to pursue a PhD. Through a series of trials and tribulations notbly - a pandemic-mandated project change, and the ‘great Oxoid shortage of 2023”, he more than earned his warhammer in 2024, defending his thesis on the impacts of eDNA on CRISPR-Cas adaptation. His departure terrifies Alex, as it marks the last of his initial cohort. We’re entering a new era…

Dr. Amany Al-Anany

PHD 2019 -2024 (BIOCHEMISTRY)

Amany came to us a graduate Ainshams University Faculty of Pharamacy, with an MSc from The American University in Cairo researching biomarkers for HCV detection. She joined our group in Jan 2019, rapidly mastered a new field, someone survived the pandemic phase, and worked on what has since become a major (the major?) theme in the lab - temperate-phage antibiotic synergy. Her exceptional contributions are the reason this is still such a prominent part of the lab’s direction. She left us in April 2024 a very different person - a mother, a PhD (the first to graduate the lab) and the weilder of a Warhammer.

Tamina Angel Jose, MSc

Graduate Student 2019-2024

She claims to come from the land of coconuts, banana chips and men who wear skirts everyday. I didn’t know any of these things about Kerala, in India. Following a B.Sc. from Mahatma Ghandi University and an M.Sc. from Madras University, Tamina came to us in Fall 2019 to brave a land with almost no coconuts in order to build on her training and experience in microbiology. When asked for some facts about her, she said she tries terribly hard (and fails) at being funny - and laughs at her own jokes. Her project involved investigating the interactions between phages and probiotics. In the pandemic, she rediscovered her love (and talent!) for music, proudly on display on her instagram. Her McMaster email is joset1@…

Dhanyasri Maddiboina

Graduate Student (2021-2023)

When she was younger, Dhany wanted to be a marine biologist, and an astronomer, and a quantum physicist (I'm not sure what 10-year old Dhany thought this actually meant). She's worked in a geochemistry lab with Henry Schwarcz, an immunology lab with Dawn Bowdish, a synthetic biology startup called FREDsense, and in chemical engineering with Zeinab Hosseinidoust before coming to work with us and the Burrows lab in 2021, where she continued until May 2023. She is passionate about advocating for change within academic systems by working with student science policy groups. When she's not reading sci fi, she's writing (not sci-fi), or rock climbing. Her McMaster email is maddibd@…

Janice Tai, MSc

MSC (BIOCHEMISTRY)
Currently: Medicine, University of Toronto

Janice joined us in 3rd year for a 3-unit project, stuck around for the summer (NSERC USRA), a thesis, another summer (NSERC USRA)... and then as a graduate student… with a fair bit of seniority, an NSERC CGS-M, and an FHS Outstanding Student Award! She told me her ultimate goal in life is to grow another inch. I wasn’t able to help with that, but she did manage to achieve one of her other goals; complete an accelerated MSc (during a pandemic, no less!) in time to begin at UofT Medicine, starting Fall 2022.

Dr. Alejandra Chávez-Carbajal

POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW
Currently: Senior Scientist, Sanofi (Toronto)

Bravely joining us as the lab’s first postdoc, Alejandra completed her PhD in Genetics and Molecular Biology at Cinvestav (Mexico). She ambushed me after a talk about bacteriophages I gave while she was on an exchange here in Hamilton, and, having just read “the perfect predator”, I think she was primed to appreciate the subject matter! She’s proven adaptable, with a background in nutrition science and a radically different PhD - and handled the leap to phages with aplomb. She’s since won prestigious PDF awards through the IIDR and FHS (PDF Leadership Award). She now works at SANOFI, in Toronto.

Anisha Nandy, MSc

Hynes Lab W2018-F2020, RA & MSc (BBS),
Currently: Scientist - high throughput core (Ginkgo Bioworks, Boston)

Anisha holds a B.Sc. from Brock University, and a B.A. in Dance and Performing Arts - the former (I presume!) led her to a job in industry. While volunteering in our shared labspace, she heard of phages and got hooked. She worked as an RA, then as an MSc student - completing her MSc in Biochemistry in 2020. Her project, of which she is quite rightly proud, included systematically probing lysogens with compounds from the McMaster HTS lab to find out what, exactly, bacteriophages can sense. As she set forth into the “real-world”, she rapidly rose through the ranks at nPLEX Biosciences in Montreal, moving to Toronto to work at Deep Genomics, and now to Boston to work for Ginkgo!

Hiba Shareefdeen, MSc

Hynes Lab F2017-F2020, RA & MSc (MedSci)
Currently: ESR Fellowship, PhD at University College Cork, Ireland

Hiba started work on phages in Dr. Surette's lab as a project student, and upon finding out there'd be a dedicated phage lab, applied to join it before I'd even set foot in my lab. She started off as a research assistant to help get the lab up and running and then began her MSc in May 2018. Her work involved tracking phage populations through fecal microbiota transplants, and then took a surprising turn as she spotted a novel phenotype in the Bacteroides isolates she was working with. She completed her MSc through the department of Medicine in May 2020 stuck around investigating what she calls “The Curious Incident of the Bacteroides in the Nighttime”. In Dec 2020, she accepted a position as a laboratory technician in Dr. Georgina Cox’s lab in Guelph, and in Sept 2021, started an extremely prestigious ESR fellowship at UCC, in Ireland, to pursue a PhD.

Rudra Sheth

Summer Studentship (2024)

Rudra joins us as a summer student in his 2nd year of the Health Sciences program. His adventure into the Gut Microbiome oddly began on a somber evening studying chess. Numbers and puzzles are his thing, and when he found out about the number of microbes living in the body (10^15, almost as many chess positions exist), he went from unpacking the 64 squares to looking for a lab position with us. As an avid South Asian activist looking to find ways to mitigate cardiovascular disease and raise awareness of their dangers, he hopes that the friendly viruses we work with may have some sort of solution

Devron Swaby

Summer Studentship (2024)

Devron is an incoming third-year Honours Life Sciences Co-op student at McMaster University. His interest in phages was sparked during an evolutionary biology lecture in his first year (we’re getting them younger!), and will be joining us for an NSERC USRA-funded studentship. Besides phages, he is deeply committed to health equity! His clinical research experience explored psychosocial factors associated with chronic kidney disease and transplantation, and he engages in community-based research and initiatives to advance equitable access to healthcare & education for African Caribbean & Black communities. Somehow in all that he still finds some time for cooking and binge-watching (although he won’t tell me what).

Jean-Christophe Panzer

Summer Studentship (2024)

A second-year Honours Biochemistry student entering the research specialization, he was drawn to the lab by his interest in how the presence of bacterial signalling molecules can influence lysis-lysogeny decisions in phages. He also impressed his TA, Christine, which probably helped get his foot in the door! In his free time, he reads - especially fantasty novels (someone else I can chat Name of the Wind with?) and volunteers/works with elderly individuals and young children.

Matthew McCarthy

THESIS (2023-2024)
Currently: PhD, University of Toronto

Matthew was our first student from the Integrated Science (iSci) program with a Biology Concentration, but won’t be our last. Matthew became interested in phages after attending a lecture on the use of phage therapy to treat an untreatable bacterial infection in his final year of high school and has been obsessed ever since. He spent some time in the Maxwell lab, and brought over his own project - lovelling dubbed “CRISPR-M”, exploring some unusual anti-CRISPRs in Pseudomons. He’s going to keep running with that same project in the Maxwell lab as a graduate student!

Sareen Karshafian

THESIS (2023-2024)
Currently: MBDC McMaster

Sareen joined us for a 4th year thesis from the Biomedical Discovery & Commercialization (BDC) program. She was first introduced to phages in my guest lecture in her 3A03 class and was instantly hooked. When not in the lab during the year she claims I can find her in the gym, having started going consistently in January and now addicted to seeing the progress. I can’t relate at all, nor am I likely to check in the gym while I’m too busy going out for a run. During her free time she likes to paint and try new things with family and friends. Recently she tried out dirt biking, but claims it didn’t stick… She worked on phage-antibiotic synergy, and she has a great story to tell you about Tobramycin.

Maryam Othman

Thesis (2022-2023)
Currently: Medicine, Western

After a project with Dr. Andres, Maryam committed to a 4th-year thesis with us in the Fall. Either keen to get started, or to find out if she has made a mistake, she first come onboard for an NSERC-funded summer studentship. Outside of academia, she enjoys reading fantasy and writing stories that never get completed. In her spare time, she volunteers at the hospital, acts as a volunteer coordinator for her local mosque's food bank, greenifies (this is a verb? it is a verb! I learn new things!) Islamic spaces with Project Green Hamilton, and runs an embroidery business with her sister. Above everything, she loves to travel and hopes to embark on a 17-country European tour next summer as a graduation present to herself. I wonder if the other 27 countries will feel left out...

Ashlyn Chou

Summer Studentship (2022)
Currently: Medicine (Mcmaster or Queens) F2024

Ashlyn joined us at the end of her first-year of kinesiology for a summer studentship, funded by an RCI Summer Student Scholarship. Despite her program's reputation for producing all manner of athletes, she considers herself the type of person to trip over air. With the time she saves not going to the gym, Ashlyn plays tenor sax for the MacSci Musical and Mac Pops Orchestra, tutors newcomer immigrant youth at the YMCA, and will be promoted from scriptwriter/director to president of Mac One Act for the 2022/23 school year. In her spare time, she enjoys playing the piano, crocheting animal figurines, writing stories with heroines as clumsy as she is, and playing Dungeons & Dragons with friends.

Yaser Al Moayad

Summer Studentship (2022)
Currently: BDC, McMaster

Yaser joined us as second year student in Honours Biochemistry, who was drawn to the lab after hearing about it on the MURSA podcast, curiosity piqued by the world of phages. He joined us to work on bacterial learning, supported by a Farncombe Summer Studentship. He tutors, and over the pandemic tried out a bunch of new hobbies (cooking, gardening, hiking, squash?) but the only ones that stuck were the two hardest to do in a pandemic: basketball and the gym. He has lived in 4 different countries, and hopes not to see that number rise any time soon. He also is very uncomfortable writing about himself in the third person

Alan Minkovich

Thesis (2021-2022)
Currently: MSc, UofT

After spending a Co-op in the Stearns Lab, he moved a full office over to the Hynes Lab to do a thesis diving into the world of CRISPR and phages. When not in the lab, he can be found in jazz band rehearsals, working on a submission for Incite Magazine (on the rare occasion he gets some artistic inspiration) or watching a ton of basketball (and probably listening to music the entire time). It also appears to me that he likes parentheticals (I’m not sure why).  While he’s all done, he’ll be attending the CSM in June to present his work and receive his hard-earned CSM Undergraduate Award!

Autumn Lawrence

Thesis (2021-2022)
Currently: MSC Kinesiology, McMaster

Autumn caught my eye at a meet-the-profs night with an insightful question, and somehow still followed up with me after surviving my mid-pat leave guest lectures in 3MI3 - either I did better than I remember, or she really likes the idea of working with phages. She has been a Welcome Week rep and an executive for the Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences Society for the past three years but is hoping to find some new clubs to join this year. No time like mid-pandemic, right? In-between study sessions she enjoy going on hikes, reading outside, or binge-watching reality TV shows with her housemates.

Jacob Bresolin

Thesis (2021-2022)
Currently: M.BTech, UofT

Jacob joined us from the BDC program, for a fourth year thesis. He is a varsity rower for McMaster, a lifeguard, a Welcome Week rep, a DJ, and an amateur graphic designer! He spends his free time hiking in the woods surrounding Hamilton, taking care of his many tropical houseplants, and listening to music. Curiously, his interest in rowing, his knowledge of phages, and his interest in research all seemed to have started in high school - he clearly had a better education than I did!

Stephanie Scott

Summer (2019, 2020)
Currently: Medical School, McMaster

She dropped by my office to try to do a 3R06, and wound up a summer NSERC student instead. That seems like it embodies the “can’t sit still” (her words, not mine) drive behind this BDC student. She’s did a 3R06 elsewhere this year, but is back for Summer 2020 - one of my covid-cohort, and would have stuck around for a Thesis in the Fall, but got into medschool first. Her McMaster email is scotts21@…

Ikram Qaderi

3R06 (2019-2020)
Currently: PhD Student BBS, McMaster

Don’t let his looks (left) fool you, Ikram is sharper than he looks! Ikram joined us for a 3R06 project partnered with Anisha to take a deeper dive into some of the unusual compounds that are inducing the ‘uninducible’ bacteriophage Mu. He caught the bug, as it were, and worked the summer and thesis in the Burrows Lab, where he now is pursuing an MSc.

Kevin Zhao

SUMMER (2018,2019), 3BM03 (2019), 3H06 (2019-2020)
Currently: Medical School, McMaster - MD/PHD pRogram

Kevin initially joined us after his first year with the support of the BHSc Summer Research Scholarship, rejoining us for a 1-term project, extended into a NSERC-funded summer, followed up with another 6 unit project… largely on bacterial “herd immunity” against phages. He was planning to stay on as a Thesis student, but got accepted to McMaster Medicine - congratulations!.

Breanna Landry

MolBio 4G12 (2019-2020)
Currently: MSc, UBC

Following a co-op term with Glysantis in Guelph, she joined us for a thesis project on phages & bacterial motility. As the first biology student in the lab, I judged the entire program based on her and it came up… very favourable! Next up for her is a final co-op term in Ottawa, working on vaccine design with Health Canada. In her initial lab bio, she claimed she has a very weird pipetting technique, but I never caught her at it. Guess I will need to invite her back to the lab for grad school?.

Neeloufar Grami

SUMMER (2019)
Currently: Medical School, Toronto

Either I’m making an effort to take on first year students and give them their first lab experiences, or this Karate black belt ‘gently’ convinced me. Following her 1st year of Honours Life Science, her summer work with us on alternative methods of bacteriophage detection was supported by a Farncombe Studentship.

Jason Tran

HonourS Thesis (2018-2019), RAII (SUMMER 2019)
Currently: Medical School, Ottawa

Jason’s absolutely exceptional work as a Biomedical Discovery and Commercialization thesis student has us most of the way towards a really exciting publication. He worked on a long-time pet project of mine, involving some under-investigated aspects of the CRISPR-Cas system. To see the project through to completion, he stuck around for the summer, before moving on to Ottawa to pursue Medical School.

Aaron Wen

SUMMER (2019)
currently: 3rd Year BHSC

Clinching a BHSc Summer Research Scholarship to work in the lab as a first year, he followed up on Andrew Chen’s work investigating bacterial motility. He put in a tremendous amount of work and moved the project forward considerably, further validating my decision to take on motivated students, even in their first year. He aims to rejoin us as a project student in the Fall of 2020 - and we’d be lucky to have him back!

Tirth Patel

Summer (2018), Project Student 3R06 (2018-2019)
CurrentLY: MEdicine, Ohio STATE

Following on some interesting findings Tirth stumbled upon in his work on quantifying phages, as a summer student supported by a Farncombe Studentship, Tirth took on a full-year project. At the end of his project, we’re still excited and confused - but perhaps confused at a higher level and about more important things? He is planning to embark on an Honours thesis in the Fall in another branch of Virology, with Dr. Karen Mossman.

Andrew Chen

Project Student 3A03 (2019)
Currently: Medical School, McMaster

Coming to us from the Honours Biochemistry Program, Andrew was independent and resourceful, tackling a project on bacterial motility that involved techniques no one else in the lab had any experience with. He then worked with Dr. Matthew Miller (McMaster) for the summer, supported by a well-deserved IIDR fellowship, and has since been accepted to McMaster Medical School.

Roland Chou

SUMMER STUDENT (2018)
Currently: Medical School, USask

Roland joined us after his second year in the Bachelor of Health Sciences program, thanks to an NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award (our first). He looked into new methods of phage isolation. He has his sights set on Medical School, but is working in another lab this summer - with yet another NSERC USRA - under the supervision of Dr. Troy Farncombe.

Clara Fikry

Co-op student (Winter 2018)
Currently: PhD program, MIT

Clara holds the dubious distinction of being the first to leave the lab! She joined us from Waterloo for her first co-op term, which was supported in part by the Student Work-Integrated Learning Program "BioTalent". She worked on the bacterial fitness benefits of lysogeny. In addition to her work as a Waterloo iGEM team lead, and her youtube channel for science education, she’s followed-up on her phage work with us by another co-op term on phages, with Dr. Karen Maxwell at UofT. She follows that with a co-op working on eukaryotes (blasphemy!) with Dr. Rebecca Shapiro at Guelph, and now, after graduation, is a “padawan” with Gincko in Massachusetts. The only things I can ever hold against Clara is that she didn’t come back for grad school, and that she had to look up what padawan meant.

Rachelle Di Tullio

RESEARCH ASSISTANT IV B (FALL 2019-Fall 2020), Joint Phage Initiative
Currently: Bioinformatician, Public Health Ontario

From an undergraduate degree in engineering, to an MSc in Biochemistry, she’s been able to explore the world of bioinformatics from some very different perspectives. Rachelle lent her much-needed bioinformatics expertise to the team, primarily working on issues at the core of the Joint Phage Initiative. She was also the third ex-member of the Surette Lab (having completed her MSc in 2018) to join the Hynes lab. People were starting to notice…

In Nov 2020, she took on a position at Public Health Ontario working on bioinformatics of Neisseria, but given how exceptional her record-keeping and guidance documents are, it definitely feels like she is still around everytime we make use of the wonderful pipelines she set up. Her McMaster email is szymkirs@…

Sara Dizzell

RAIV (SUMMER 2019)
Currently: Ottawa, RCMP

A graduate of the University of Ottawa, she then moved to McMaster to work, and later take on an MSc, in Dr. Charu Kaushic's Lab. Upon completion, she took on a role elsewhere in the building as a research coordinator for an observational birth cohort study (Baby & Mi) at McMaster University, working directly with Dr. Stearns. As each transition seems to cross a smaller space, she’s moved to the other side of the lab for a stab at the world of fantastic phages! She’s since taken on a well-deserved permament position in Ottawa.