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Concordia University Concordia celebrates 50 years!
Concordia University Concordia celebrates 50 years!

Department of Biology

Department of Biology

Faculty members

  • Christopher L Brett
    • Professor, Biology
    • Co-Director, Centre for Microscopy at Concordia
    • Concordia University Research Chair in Applied Cell Science
    Research areas: Fundamental lysosome biology and its role in aging; Engineered extracellular vesicles for therapeutic applications
  • Grant E Brown
    • Professor , Biology
    Research areas: Behavioural ecology, Chemical ecology, Predator-prey interactions, Cognitive ecology, Trinidadian guppies, Atlantic salmon, Convict cichlids
  • Selvadurai Dayanandan
    • Professor, Department of Biology
    • Associate Dean - Research and Infrastructure, Faculty of Arts and Science
    Research areas: Evolution and maintenance of biodiversity in forest and agricultural landscapes
  • Emma Despland
    • Professor, Biology
    Research areas: Individual behaviour in insect-plant interactions, and its role in population-level processes
  • Marie-Julie Favé
    • Full-time Faculty, Biology
    Research areas: Computational Genomics, Human medical genetics, population genetics, human evolutionary genomics
  • Ian Ferguson
    • Senior Lecturer, Biology
    Research areas: My background is in evolutionary ecology, specifically the evolution of traits constrained by genetic correlations. I currently do not have an active research program, concentrating instead on teaching Introductory Biology (BIOL 201) and some other courses (not accepting graduate students)
  • Dylan Fraser
    • Associate Professor, Biology
    Research areas: Evolutionary applications to conservation biology; adaptation to environmental change; fisheries and wildlife management; population, conservation and quantitative genetics; molecular ecology.
  • James W.A. Grant
    • Professor, Biology
    Research areas: The behaviour, ecology and conservation biology of stream-dwelling salmonids.
  • Madoka Gray-Mitsumune
    • Senior Lecturer, Biology
    • Co-op Academic Director, Biology
    • Undergraduate Program Director, Biology
  • Patrick Gulick
    • Professor, Biology
    Research areas: Genomic analysis of environmental stress-tolerance in plants.
  • Brandon Helfield
    • Tier II Canada Research Chair in Molecular Biophysics in Human Health
    • Assistant Professor, Physics
    • Assistant Professor, Biology
  • Rassim Khelifa
    • Assistant Professor, Biology
    Research areas: Global change ecology, Life history evolution, Conservation Biology, Behavioural Ecology, Community Ecology, Environmental Sustainability
  • Elena Kuzmin
    • Assistant Professor, Biology
    • Canada Research Chair Tier 2 in Synthetic and Functional Genomics
    Research areas: Complex Genetic Networks, Cancer Genomics, Large Copy Number Variants, Functional Genomics, Yeast Genetics
  • David H Kwan
    • Associate Professor, Biology
    Research areas: Synthetic biology, chemical biology, enzyme engineering, directed evolution, antimicrobial drug screening
  • Jin Suk Lee
    • Associate Professor , Biology
    Research areas: Signal transduction pathways controlling plant growth and development
  • Jean-Philippe Lessard
    • Professor, Biology
    Research areas: Community ecology and biogeography, Macroecology, Biodiversity, Global Change, Entomology
  • Vincent Martin
    • Professor and Concordia University Senior Research Chair, Biology
    status: On sabbatical until June 30, 2025
    Research areas: Metabolic engineering and synthetic biology of natural products. Microbial evolutionary engineering
  • Eric Pedersen
    • Associate Professor, Biology
    Research areas: quantitative ecology, fisheries, marine and aquatic community ecology, rapid change in ecosystems, movement ecology, biostatistics
  • Pedro Peres-Neto
    • Professor, Biology
    Research areas: aquatic ecology, fish biology, spatial ecology, community ecology, biodiversity, biostatistics, quantitative ecology
  • Alisa Piekny
    • Professor, Biology
    • Associate Dean Research and Infrastructure, School of Health
    Research areas: cell division, cell migration, gene editing, cancer, drug discovery, nanoparticle uptake
  • Michael Sacher
    • Professor, Biology
    Research areas: Membrane traffic and vesicle recognition in the early secretory pathway, TRAPP-opathies (diseases of TRAPP mutations), TANGO2 function and therapeutics
  • Pascale Sicotte
    • Professor, Biology
    • Dean, Faculty of Arts and Science
  • Nicola S Smith
    Research areas: Marine invasions, climate change effects on marine systems, and their interaction with implications for ocean sustainability. Human-drivers of ecological change on coral reefs.
  • Adrian Tsang
    • Professor and Director, Center for Functional and Structural Genomics, Biology
    Research areas: Structural and functional genomics of filamentous fungi; identification and production of enzymes with biomass conversion or antimicrobial activities; analysis of gut microbiomes of livestock animals to improve gut health; and development of fungal platforms for the biomanufacturing of extracellular enzymes and metabolites.
  • David Walsh
    • Professor, Biology
    Research areas: Microbial ecology of aquatic ecosystems; climate change and the oceans; environmental genomics and proteomics of natural microbial communities; microbial evolution
  • Robert Weladji
    • Graduate Program Director, Biology
    • Professor, Biology
    Research areas: Behavioural ecology of large herbivores, life history strategies and evolutionary ecology, population ecology, population dynamics, terrestrial ecosystems ecology, wildlife conservation and management, wildlife ecology, welfare of captive wildlife.
  • Malcolm Whiteway
    • Professor and Canada Research Chair in Microbial Genomics, Biology
    Research areas: Genetics and genomics of the fungal pathogen Candida albicans
  • William Zerges
    • Professor, Biology
    Research areas: Molecular mechanisms underlying the biogenesis of the thylakoid membrane compartment in the eukaryotic alga Chlamydomonas reinhardti
  • Carly Ziter
    • Assistant Professor, Biology
    Research areas: Landscape ecology; ecosystem services; biodiversity science; urban ecology; multifunctional landscapes; forest ecology; land-use legacies; sustainability

  • Shimon Amir
    • Professor, Psychology
    • Affiliate Professor , Biology
    • Affiliate Professor , Chemistry and Biochemistry
    • Affiliate Professor, Department of Health, Kinesiology & Applied Physiology
    Research areas: Behavioral and molecular neuroscience of circadian biology
  • Andreas Bergdahl
    • Associate Professor of Cardiovascular & Performance Physiology, Department of Health, Kinesiology & Applied Physiology
    Research areas: cardiovascular disease, heart failure, atherosclerosis, hypertension, vascular complications of diabetes, mitochondria, bioenergetics
  • Peter Darlington
    • Associate Professor, Health, Kinesiology and Applied Physiology
    • Associate Professor, Biology
    Research areas: Immunology and autonomic nervous system
  • Ann English
    • Distinguished Professor Emerita and Honorary Concordia University Research Chair in Bioinorganic Chemistry, Chemistry and Biochemistry
    Research areas: Bioinorganic, analytical and biophysical chemistry, oxidative stress, nitric oxide biochemistry, proteomics, mass spectrometry.
  • Brandon Findlay
    • Associate Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry
    Research areas: Drug discovery, natural products, directed evolution, biochemistry.
  • Jochen A. G. Jaeger
    • Associate Professor, Geography, Planning and Environment
    Research areas: Landscape ecology, including road ecology, Quantification and assessment of landscape structure and landscape change, Urban sprawl, Ecological modelling, Impact assessment.
  • Paul Joyce
    • Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry
    Research areas: Biochemistry, Genomics, Proteomics, Molecular/Cell Biology.
  • Laszlo Kalman
    • Associate Professor, Physics
    • Undergraduate Program Director, Physics
    • Co-op Academic Director, Physics
    Research areas: molecular biophysics; bioenergetics; photosynthesis
  • Nawwaf Kharma
    • Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
    Research areas: Evolutionary Algorithms (for search & optimization); Machine Learning (for prediction & design); Synthetic Biology (particularly, ribozyme design for gene silencing and RNA circularization).
  • Peter Pawelek
    • Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry
    Research areas: Bacterial iron uptake, molecular mechanisms of bacterial pathogenesis, protein-protein interactions, membrane proteins, biophysical chemistry, protein chemistry, phage display, X-ray crystallography.
  • Sylvia Santosa
    • Professor, Department of Health, Kinesiology & Applied Physiology
    • Canada Research Chair Tier II, Clinical Nutrition
    Research areas: Obesity, Nutrition, Metabolism, Adipose Tissue, Lipids, Body Composition, Energetics, Humans
  • Steve C. C. Shih
    • Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
    Research areas: microfluidics, synthetic biology, automation, energy, health
  • Jeannine-Marie St-Jacques
    • Associate Professor, Geography, Planning and Environment
    Research areas: North American freshwater availability, decadal-to-centennial water variability, regional hydrology and climate, impacts of global warming, water management for sustained droughts and floods, paleoclimatology, tree-rings, pollen, instrumental data, climate models.

Catherine Bachewich

Affiliate Associate Professor, Concordia University 
catherine.bachewich@concordia.ca

  • Regulation of the cell cycle, development and virulence in fungi
Isabelle Benoit-Gelber

Affiliate Assistant Professor, Concordia University 
isabelle.benoit@concordia.ca

  • Filamentous fungi; genomics; molecular microbiology; microbial interactions
Tonia De Bellis

Professor, Program Coordinator of Environmental Science, Dawson College 
tdebellis@place.dawsoncollege.qc.ca

  • Community ecology; invasion biology of plants; role of soil fungi in the invasion of Norway Maples in temperate forests in Quebec
Maud C.O. Ferrari
Professor, University of Saskatchewan
  • How biotic and abiotic factors (both natural or from anthropogenic origins) affect predator-prey interactions
Chiara Gamberi

Assistant Professor, Coastal Carolina University
cgamberi@coastal.edu

  • Developmental biology; use of the fruit fly Drosophilia as a model organism to study gene regulation (e.g. translation) of specific developmental events including formation and maintenance of malpighian tubules. Polycystic Kidney Disease.
Michael Halllett
Professor, University of Western Ontario
  • Computational biology; single cell profiling technologies
Patrick Pare

Director, Research and Conservation, Zoo de Granby 
ppare@zoodegranby.com

  • Conservation and welfare of captive wildlife; animal enrichment programs; biodiversity preservation
Anne-Helene Prieur-Richard

Global Hub Director, Future Earth 
anne-helene.prieur-richard@futureearth.org

  • Ecology; environmental change and the sustainable use of natural resources; plant biodiversity and biological invasions
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