Meet the incoming professors at the Faculty of Science
Our incoming professors bring fresh and unique perspectives to campus with their research and teaching experience. Click through to see profiles of the faculty member featured below.
Statistician Dr. Alexi Rodríguez-Arelis is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Master of Data Science program.
Dr. Matthew Tarling's favourite part about being a structural geologist is being able to experience science through the lens of the outdoors. He studies how rocks break, bend, squish and flow in the interior of the Earth.
Dr. Stella Lee first started teaching at UBC in 2017 and has been a lecturer since 2020, primarily teaching the undergraduate course in Developmental Biology. She is a physiologist by training. For her PhD, Dr. Lee studied the possible interaction between brain stem serotonin deficiency and prenatal nicotine exposure in the manifestation of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).
Dr. Katie Burak is an assistant professor of teaching in the UBC's statistics department, and is also a member of the academic team for the Master of Data Science program. She has a passion for statistical outreach and promoting women in data science and works with UBC's Girls in Data Science summer camp.
Dr. Michelle Kunimoto is an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of British Columbia. Her research is primarily focused on exoplanet detection, characterization, and demographics. She approaches these fields in data-driven ways, developing and improving techniques to extract as much as we can from exoplanet surveys while answering key science questions along the way.
Dr. Monika Fischer studies the role that fungi play in wildfire recovery. She combines genetics and molecular biology to better understand how fire-adapted fungi interact with each other and their environment.
Dr. Arpan Gujarati designs real time software systems for embedded computers. His research takes a deep dive into the safety-critical aspect of systems, where failure is not an option.
Dr. Nguyen Phong Hoang's research lies at the nexus of network security, online privacy and internet measurement. He studies how different governments try to control the way people access information online, and makes that data publicly available.
Dr. Anotida Madzvamuse’s research focuses on understanding single cell dynamics and how they migrate through their environments. His work spans physics, biophysics, cellular biology, developmental biology, biomedical engineering and cancer research.
Dr. Marco Todesco's research focuses on understanding how plants adapt to different and changing environments. He aims to link ecological processes (the traits that allow a plant to survive in a certain environment) to genetic variation (the genes and molecular mechanisms that are important for those adaptations) using an ever-expanding mix of molecular and developmental biology, genetics, genomics, physiology, and field studies.
Dr. Amani Hariri is an Assistant Professor in UBC’s Department of Chemistry. Her research aims to find solutions to the most pressing problems in healthcare today—ranging from Alzheimer’s disease, cancer and diabetes—by combining expertise in molecular design and optics to engineer single molecule tools and transformative platforms for monitoring and diagnostics.
New Department of Statistics prof Dr. Geoff Pleiss brings stats and computer science together to improve the accessibility and reliability of AI. His research opens new avenues for different ways of making data-driven discoveries.
Dr. Kayla King's research focuses on host-microbial parasite/pathogen systems, which are fascinating for examining the consequences of strong selection and evolution in the lab and nature. Host-pathogen interactions can drive really fast evolutionary change.
Dr. Selena Sagan is a professor in the department of microbiology and immunology whose research explores how positive-sense RNA viruses—including hepatitis C, dengue and Zika viruses—usurp host cells, replicate their genomes, and cause disease.
Dr. Hal Bradbury is a chemical oceanographer and a marine isotope biogeochemist. His research looks at carbon cycling in the sediments and how they link to the overlying ocean.
Dr. Joséphine Gantois combines economics and ecology with qualitative research and machine learning to study how we can produce food while reducing our impact on wildlife habitat. She holds a joint position at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, and Land and Food Systems on Human Dimensions of Biodiversity Conservation.
Dr. Laura Lukes's research focuses on the intersection of geology and psychology, and how to better prepare students for field experiences. Dr. Lukes also studies how people learn in museums.
Dr. Kevin Wei is a new assistant professor in zoology. His lab combines genomics, evolutionary, molecular, and developmental biology to understand how selfish genetic elements like transposable elements drive the evolution of genome complexity and regulation of developmental processes.
Dr. Shandin Pete is a new assistant professor of teaching at the department of earth, ocean and atmospheric science. His interest lies in Indigenous research methodologies, geoscientific ethnography, Indigenous astronomy, social-political tribal structures, culturally congruent instructional strategies, and Indigenous science philosophies.
Dr. Joel Östblom is a new assistant professor of teaching in the Master of Data Science program. He is passionate about open access communities that can make data science more accessible for students.
Dr. Miranda Holmes-Cerfon's research is at the intersection of soft matter physics and statistical physics, which helps design nanoscale systems that can be useful in different tools, from vaccines, nano-robots, to battery components and microscopes.
Dr. Lucy Gao's research is in biostatistics, involving data collected with a new technology called single-cell RNA-sequencing, which allows researchers to assess gene activity at the single-cell level.
Computer scientist Dr. Vered Shwartz studies how to improve common sense reasoning in natural language processing (NLP) by building and training machine learning models.
Dr. Jiarui Ding's research is in modeling biological data, with knowledge from decades of biomedical research as prior information encoded in model structures, to uncover the interpretable latent factors.
Dr. Caroline Lemieux's research aims to help developers improve the correctness, security, and performance of software systems.
Dr. Lindsey Daniels is a new Assistant Professor of teaching in the department of math. Her teaching focuses on the practical applications of math, and her research focus is finding methodologies that help students stay engaged during the school year.
Dr. Kaitlyn Gaynor is a new Assistant Professor in the departments of botany and zoology. Her research examines the effects of human activity on global biodiversity.
Dr. Alex Moore is a new Assistant Professor in the department of botany with a joint appointment in the faculty of forestry's department of forest and conservation sciences. Their researchers focuses on how predator-prey interactions impact the health and functioning of coastal wetland ecosystems and explores the role that cultural values and knowledge play in ecosystem restoration conservation.
Dr. Ilsa Cooke is a new Assistant Professor in the department of chemistry. Her research focuses on laboratory surface and gas-phase experiments to unravel the formation of molecules in interstellar space.
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