Honours student research profiles

Tenea Welsh is a fourth-year honours student in the department of psychology.

“I am very fortunate to be working with Dr. Belke this year. For my thesis, we have been training rats to run on fixed interval schedules in which the rats get a drop of sugar water for running during an interval of time. We want to see how changing the duration of the interval affects characteristics of running. For example, how do running rates change when the interval is 60 seconds compared to 15 seconds? It’s a really cool project because often animal behavior is similar to human behavior and vice versa. To anyone reading this, I want you to know that anything is possible if you set your mind to it-as, cliché as it may sound. I never thought I’d end up here.”

Catherine Fiset is a fourth-year honours student in the department of biology.

“I am working with Dr. Finkel and my project aims to determine how Phaeocystis, a marine phytoplankton species, changes its biochemical composition under two different nutrient regimes: nitrogen limitation and phosphorous limitation. We are interested in knowing this because Phaeocystis is abundant in Arctic and Antarctic waters, where it blooms seasonally and alters the biogeochemical composition of the ocean and impacts ecological relationships. Knowing the composition of Phaeocystis under different environmental conditions helps us better understand and model oceanic systems.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Articles