Fall 2022 Seminar Series

Dr. Nathalie Isabelle Chardon, Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of British Columbia

Nathalie completed her PhD at the University of Colorado, Boulder (USA) and spent long days in the Rocky Mountains for her field work. She then worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research (Switzerland) while conducting her field work in Greenland. Nathalie is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of British Columbia and works on field experiments in Garibaldi Provincial Park (BC) and the Washington Cascades (USA). Nathalie is also passionate about weaving her research into her teaching and public outreach. 

Dr. Michelle Tseng, Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia

Dr. Tseng did her undergrad and MSc at the University of Toronto and Ph.D. at Indiana University. Dr. Tseng has broad interests in fundamental and applied evolutionary ecology. In an alternate life, Dr. Tseng would be a cinematographer for BBC Earth or a master baker.

Dr. Nathan Gillett, Research Scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada.

Dr. Gillet holds a PhD in atmospheric physics from the University of Oxford. After his doctorate, Nathan worked as a post-doc at the University of Victoria on the detection and attribution of climate change, before being appointed as a lecturer at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in the UK. In 2008, Nathan returned to Canada to work as a research scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis (CCCma) in Victoria. He served as manager of CCCma from 2014 to 2018, overseeing the development and application of Canada’s earth system model. Nathan is also an Honorary Research Professor at the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria, and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Geography at Simon Fraser University.

Dr. Gillet's primary research interests are in detection and attribution of climate change, projections of future climate change, and attribution of extreme events. He served as a lead author of the IPCC Fourth and Fifth Assessment Reports, the 2014 World Meteorological Organization Ozone Assessment, and Canada’s Changing Climate Report. More recently he co-led the chapter of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report on human influence on the climate system.

Dr. Matteo Saletti did his studies in Europe (BD, MD in Italy and PhD at ETH in Switzerland) with a focus in Hydraulic Engineering and Geomorphology. He moved to Vancouver in 2017 where he held several postdoctoral positions at UBC and now he is a Research Associate at SFU in the School of Environmental Science.

Dr. Evan Byrnes is a Postdoctoral Fellow at SFU in Vancouver, BC examining salmon migration. His research interests broadly focus on mechanisms of animal behaviour and ecology, with a particular interest in fishes. He completed his graduate work in Australia, where he focused on elasmobranch personality and cognition (MSc, Macquarie University in Sydney) and metabolic ecology of elasmobranchs (PhD, Murdoch University in Perth). Outside of work, Evan can often be found connecting with nature via gardening, freediving, rock climbing, hiking, or snowboarding.

Dr. Navin Ramankutty is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Data Science for Sustainable Global Food Systems at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs and the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia. He was trained originally as an engineer, but his interests shifted over the years to climate science, global ecosystem science, and land & food system science. Today his research uses global data and models to explore solutions for sustainably feeding humanity.

Dr. Tara Troy, Associate Professor at University of Victoria

Dr. Troy's research group focuses on how humans impact hydrologic processes, how to incorporate these impacts into hydrologic models, and how to use models to test hypotheses. Prior to joining the faculty at UVic, Dr. Troy was a P.C. Rossin Assistant Professor at Lehigh University, an Associate Research Scientist at the Columbia University Water Center, and received her Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Princeton University.