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Dr. Kevin McCann
Director (Professor)
Kevin is a mathematical ecologist that works on the relationship between biostructure and ecosystem function, stability, and sustainability. His lab combines theory and field work to look at how global change alters aquatic biostructure in Canadian Shield lakes, marine ecosystems, and floodplains. This research scales from genes to ecosystems and can be used to develop large scale perspectives on sustainability in a changing world.
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Dr. Joey Bernhardt
Assistant Professor
Joey is an ecologist whose research aims to advance our fundamental understanding of the drivers of biodiversity change and the consequences of these changes for human well-being. She combines theory, experiments and synthesis to study how living systems change as the environment changes, and what these changes mean for human well-being.
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Helen Vanos
Communications & Operations Coordinator
Helen has a background in biology (BSc., University of Guelph) and Publicity and Public Relations (University of Toronto) which she combines with her love for all things wildlife and sustainability-related to support the core team at the Centre for Ecosystem Management. She oversees all administrative and day-to-day activities, including the CEM’s website and social media accounts.
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Dr. Kayla Hale
Postdoctoral Fellow (McCann Lab)
Kayla is a theoretical ecologist that studies the structure and dynamics of complex networks of species interactions. Her research focuses on how different types of interactions – with consumers, resources, and mutualists – interface to affect ecological systems across scales, from organisms’ behaviour to emergent ecosystem services like agricultural yield.
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Dr. Amanda Cicchino
Postdoctoral Fellow (Bernhardt Lab)
Amanda is an integrative ecologist focused on understanding how organisms respond to environmental change. She uses thermal physiological, genomic, and computational approaches in her investigations of species vulnerability to gradual and rapid environmental changes. Amanda is focused on answering how local spatial temperature variation can mediate – or exacerbate – organismal vulnerability to warming temperatures in the Great Lakes.
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Dr. Jason Laurich
Postdoctoral Fellow (Bernhardt Lab)
Jason is an evolutionary ecologist whose research explores the consequences of mutualistic interactions among species. He uses experimental and genomic approaches to study the effects of microbiomes on the fitness, phenotypes, and stress tolerance of their hosts. Jason has a PhD from the University of Toronto and an MSc. from Memorial University of Newfoundland.
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Dr. Kaleigh Davis
Postdoctoral Fellow (Bernhardt Lab)
Kaleigh is an ecologist interested in understanding broad patterns in how biological systems respond to warming. Her primary focus is on the interaction between climate warming and resource availability, and how this affects species interactions and ecosystem functioning. Through her work, Kaleigh aims to integrate basic and applied ecology in order to address urgent, local problems associated with anthropogenic change.
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Dr. Chris Brimacombe
Postdoctoral Fellow (McCann Lab)
Chris is an ecologist who studies species interaction networks, exploring what shapes their structure—whether it’s the biology of the system or environmental influences. He uses network theory to better understand how species interact and communities function, with a focus on identifying and addressing biases to make these network models more reliable and useful.
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Dr. Timothy Fernandes
Postdoctoral Fellow (McCann Lab)
Tim’s research has broadly focused on understanding the seasonal biology of aquatic organisms to identify if and how seasonal ecological and physiological processes shape organismal- and population-level vulnerability to global change. Currently he’s working on identifying the impacts of seasonal disturbances (e.g., sound) on predator-prey interactions and fish behaviour and physiology to directly inform federal policy.
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Dr. Michael Yodzis
Postdoctoral Fellow (McCann Lab)
Mike is a mathematician whose specialty is in dynamical systems modelling and analysis, applied to identifying features of fragility and resilience within ecological, economic, and financial systems. His interest in human activity overlaps with ecology in topics including resource governance, institutional evolution, cooperation-competition trade-offs and risk-taking, all within changing ecological and economic environments.
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