Researchers and Key Personnel

Dr. Barry Flinn

Co-Lead Investigator
Dr. Barry Flinn’s experience in the plant biotechnology industry includes three years as Project Leader with the Forestry Gene Selection and Forestry Transgenics Groups at Genesis Research and Development Corporation Ltd. in New Zealand. At Genesis, he oversaw the development of large-scale gene and promoter candidate screening efforts from the largest forestry EST database in existence at that time. Dr. Flinn also contributed to the development of transformation and cell-based assay systems for screening of candidate genes and promoters. This work led to several issued patents. As Research Director with Solanum Genomics International Inc., Dr. Flinn led functional genomics work on isogenic potato lines that are resistant and susceptible to late blight pathogens. For the CPGP, Dr. Flinn oversaw the cDNA library construction, EST data acquisition/analysis, operational bioinformatics, and microarray generation aspects of the project. In 2005, Dr. Flinn was appointed Research Director of the newly-established Institute for Sustainable and Renewable Resources (ISRR), a division of Virginia Tech's Institute for Advanced Learning and Research.
http://www.ialr.org/index.php

Dr. Sharon Regan

Co-Lead Investigator
Dr. Sharon Regan holds a Canada Research Chair in Fundamental Plant Biology at Queen’s University. During a post-doctoral fellowship at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Dr. Regan was involved in creating what was then the largest published EST library in trees, and a substantial resource for genes related to wood formation. More recently, Dr. Regan was a co-investigator on the Genome Canada-funded project: “Functional genomics of regulation in forest trees.” Her research group created a collection of 2500 activation tagged poplar lines, a valuable resource for forest biotechnology. Dr. Regan has also demonstrated that Arabidopsis is a model system for wood formation in trees; representing an important tool for advancing our basic understanding of this process. As co-lead investigator of the CPGP, she has led the activation tagging component of the project.
http://biology.queensu.ca/faculty/regan.html

John Argall

Project Manager
Under the corporate management of Genome Atlantic, local project management of the Canadian Potato Genome Project was conducted by John Argall, Executive Director of BioAtlantech in Fredericton, N.B. With academic training in crop physiology and business management, John has over twenty-five years of experience with agricultural sciences in production, project management, economic development, research, advisory, teaching and technology transfer roles. He has worked in industry, academia, and government in most areas of Canada, and in the US.
www.bioatlantech.nb.ca

Dr. David De Koeyer

Co-Investigator
Dr. David De Koeyer is a Molecular Geneticist and Plant Breeder at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Potato Research Centre. Dr. De Koeyer has conducted innovative research in oat, wheat, and potato breeding by using traditional breeding techniques, as well as more modern molecular technologies. He brought over a decade of experience to the CPGP, acquired in marker-assisted selection strategies, the deployment of bioinformatics, QTL identification and validation, and traditional breeding techniques within cereal crop and potato breeding teams.
http://res2.agr.ca/fredericton/emp/dekoeyer_e.htm

Dr. Claudia Goyer

Co-Investigator
Dr. Claudia Goyer is a molecular bacteriologist at the Potato Research Centre (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada) in Fredericton, N.B. Dr. Goyer is an expert on common scab of potato, a disease caused by a soil-borne bacteria named Streptomyces. She also studied the causal agent of fire blight of apple trees, Erwinia amylovora during a postdoctoral position at the Max-Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Germany. Dr. Goyer's current research is focused on several strategies to reduce common scab damages such as investigating the genetic basis of resistance of potato to common scab and the use of biological controls.
http://res2.agr.ca/fredericton/emp/goyer_e.htm

Dr. Patrice Audy

Co-Investigator
Former Research Scientist, Potato Research Center, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

Dr. Xiu-Qing Li

Co-Investigator
Dr. Xiu-Qing Li is a Molecular Geneticist at Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada's Potato Research Centre (PRC) in Fredericton, N.B., an adjunct professor at UNB, and has nearly 20 years of experience in plant breeding and molecular genetics acquired in diverse institutions across Asia, Europe and North America. Since his arrival at the PRC in 1997, Dr. Li has been involved in characterizing the traits of a core potato population, and is in the process of developing a genetic map for this population.
http://res2.agr.ca/fredericton/emp/li_e.htm

Norman Siebrasse

Co-Investigator
Norman Siebrasse is an Associate Professor at UNB and a co-Director of the Centre for Social Innovation Research (CeSIR). Professor Siebrasse worked as an engineer and clerked for the Supreme Court of Canada before joining the Law Faculty at UNB Fredericton in 1993. His teaching and research interests focus on intellectual property law and commercial law, in particular mortgage law, as well as the intersection between the two. His many articles and reports include a Report on Leveraging Knowledge Assets, prepared for the Law Commission of Canada, in which Professor Siebrasse and his co-author, Professor Catherine Walsh of McGill University, explore options for simplifying the law in order to allow simple and cost-effective mortgaging of intellectual property assets. Another article, "A Remedial Benefit-Based Approach to the Innocent User Problem in the Patenting of Higher Life Forms" 20 Canadian Intellectual Property Review 79 (2004) was cited by the Supreme Court of Canada in its decision in Monsanto v. Schmeiser as the main authority on the remedial issue, the sole point on which the Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeal.
http://www.unb.ca/law/Siebrasse

Dr. Keith Culver

Co-Investigator
Dr. Keith Culver is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at UNB, and a Director for the Centre for Social Innovation Research (CeSIR). He teaches legal philosophy, ethics, and political philosophy. Dr. Culver’s current research focuses on integration of national and international non-legal and legal protection of intellectual property generated by biotechnology, and questions of business ethics in relations between biotechnology firms and developing states.
http://www.unbf.ca/arts/Phil/kculver/index.html

Dr. Virendra Bhavsar

Co-Investigator
Dr. Virendra Bhavsar is Dean of the Faculty of Computer Science at UNB and the Director of UNB's Advanced Computational Research Lab. Dr. Bhavsar has made substantial contributions to computer science in the areas of parallel/distributed processing, artificial intelligence (including artificial neural networks), computer graphics and visualization. His research group developed new bioinformatics tools for the CPGP.
http://www.cs.unb.ca/profs/bhavsar/

Dr. Patricia Evans

Co-Investigator
Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of New Brunswick. http://www.cs.unb.ca/profs/pevans/bioinfor.html

Dr. Gefu Wang-Pruski

Co-Investigator
Dr. Gefu Wang-Pruski is an associate professor in the Department of Plant and Animal Sciences at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College (Truro, NS). She is also a co-inventor on one approved, and six pending, patents. With a varied background and publication record in gene expression, transformation and low light imaging analysis for plant and mammalian systems, she presently leads the potato molecular biology laboratory at NSAC and a research program involved with the investigation of after-cooking darkening in processing potatoes. Her experience spans two continents, including a wide range of North American locations. Dr. Wang-Pruski has over 20 years experience in molecular biology of plant and animals.
http://www.nsac.ns.ca/pas/staff/gwa/

Dr. Vicki Gustafson

Research Scientist
Dr. Vicki Gustafson has twenty years’ experience in plant tissue culture and transformation in both academic and corporate settings. Dr. Gustafson received her Ph.D. in Agronomy from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and, prior to joining the CPGP, she was involved in high-throughput corn transformation for the Insect Resistance Team at Pioneer Hi-Bred International in Johnston, Iowa. In addition to her role as a Research Scientist with the CPGP Activation Tagging group, Dr. Gustafson was appointed Research Director of Solanum Genomics International, Inc. in 2005.

Dr. Sarma Mallubhotla

Research Scientist
Dr. Sarma C. Mallubhotla received his Ph.D in Crop Physiology with specialization in Plant Tissue Culture from the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore, India. He worked in different capacities for 7 years in the plant biotechnology industry, in the areas of tissue culture and commercial micropropagation. During his tenure in industry he developed commercially viable production technologies for a wide range of foliage & flowering ornamentals for both domestic & export markets. He was a Manager in a Biotechnology Program funded by the Government of The Netherlands and implemented in India to help increase yields and incomes of dry land farmers. Dr. Mallubhotla worked for Kalindi Agro Biotech Ltd (India) in collaboration with an Israeli firm, where he developed and executed a project on micro- & mini-tuber technology for several potato varieties. He joined the CPGP Activation Tagging Group in April 2003 as Research Scientist, based at Carleton University, Ottawa.

Dr. Monisha Bagchi

Research Scientist
Dr. Monisha Bagchi (Sanyal) received her Ph.D. in Applied Botany from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India, in 2002. She is a specialist in plant tissue culture and has extensively studied in vitro developmental pathways in ornamental geophytes. Dr. Bagchi has also studied somatic embryogenesis in Gladiolus and she developed a non-invasive image analysis system to distinguish between the normal and malformed protocorms of Gladiolus. Dr. Bagchi joined the Activation Tagging group at Carleton University in April 2003.

Dr. Bipasha Chakravarty

Research Scientist
Dr. Bipasha Chakravarty received her Ph.D from the University of Calcutta, India and was a Pool Scientist for the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in New Delhi. She is a specialist in in vitro culture techniques including somatic embryogenesis, protoplast isolation and generating metal-tolerant plants in vitro. She has also carried out DNA and protein analysis, isozyme study and biochemical analysis of cultured plants of various species of medicinal and aromatic plants, citrus and oil-yielding crops. Dr. Chakravarty joined the Activation Tagging group in June 2003.

Dr. Ravinder Sardana

Microarray Scientist
Dr. Ravinder Sardana received his Ph.D in molecular genetics from the University of Cambridge. Following this, he journeyed to the Department of Biochemistry, University of Ottawa, where he worked on pollen-specific genes and the use of anti-sense RNA to control male fertility. As a research associate at the University of Ottawa, he initiated and established rice biotechnology projects, which led to the creation of synthetic codon-optimized Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) gene cassettes, and the development of transgenic Bt plants. He also went on to initiate and lead projects in the areas of pharmaceutical protein-based medicine and vaccine production in plants. Dr. Sardana was also involved in the goldfish brain microarray project at The Center for Advanced Research in Environmental Genomics (CAREG) where he worked on protein expression and the comparative biochemistry of glutamic acid decarboxylases from goldfish and human brain. Dr. Sardana joined CPGP in 2003 as a Microarray Scientist, and is currently a Patent Examiner with the Biotechnology Section of the Chemical Division at Industry Canada.

Charlotte Rothwell

Research Associate
Charlotte received her B.Sc. in Biology from UNB in 1999. She has worked as a Quality Assurance Specialist for a dairy, and as a Microbiology Technologist at RPC. In 2000, she joined Solanum Genomics International, Inc., where she carried out vector construction and generated potato cDNA libraries for microarray analysis. Charlotte's contributions to the CPGP include constructing libraries for production of potato ESTs and molecular characterization of activation tagged plants. In 2008 she moved over to BioAtlantech as a Research Project Officer.

Jennifer O'Donnell

Research Technician
Jenn received her M.Sc. in 2003 from the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at Dalhousie University, where she studied the structure and regulation of an enzyme implicated in cancer biology. Prior to joining the CPGP in 2004, she participated in seed potato certification at Agricultural Certification Services in Fredericton, N.B. In 2006 Jenn became a lab manager for Targeted Growth Canada.

Martin Lagüe

Bioinformatician
Martin obtained a bioinformatics certificate from the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia after attending the Canadian Bioinformatics Workshops. He received his M.Sc from the Department of Biology at Université de Moncton in 1999, where he studied the effects of dial cycle of food availability on Golden Schriner's (fishes) locomotor activity pattern. He also holds a post-graduate diploma in Information Technology from the Mathematics and Computer Science department at Université de Moncton. Martin was in charge of designing, developing and maintaining the genomic database, designing and developing the interface to that database and analyzing the genomic data for the CPGP. Before joining CPGP, he worked as a Bioinformatician for Solanum Genomics International, Inc., where he analyzed and managed potato genomic data. In April 2005, Martin became a Bioinformatics Computer Analyst for the Potato Research Center (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada) in Fredericton.

Rebecca Griffiths

Bioinformatician - Biological Curator
Rebecca Griffiths received her B.Sc. in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology from McMaster University in 1999. Rebecca has worked as a technician in cancer-related research, both at McMaster and at the Princess Margaret Hospital, where she was responsible for identifying new organosulfur compounds with antitumour efficacy and specificity. She received a certificate in Bioinformatics from Seneca College in 2003 prior to joining the CPGP bioinformatics team.

Patrick McCabe

Software Developer
Patrick McCabe graduated in 2005 from the Bachelor of Computer Science program at UNB Fredericton. Patrick was a member of the bioinformatics team and was also instrumental in creating and maintaining the CPGP website.

Dr. Sharen Bowman

Collaborator
Chief Technology Officer, Genome Atlantic
Dr. Sharen Bowman joined Genome Atlantic as Chief Technology Officer in February, 2004. She oversaw the sequencing group at the Atlantic Genome Centre, which is currently involved in many genome sequencing projects for diverse organisms ranging from microbes through to potato and halibut. Before joining Genome Atlantic, Dr. Bowman worked for Syngenta, where her work involved comparing rice genome sequence with information from other crop cereals and developing genetic markers for mapping and analysis of commercially important traits. Prior to this, Dr. Bowman worked at the Sanger Centre, and was involved in major genome projects for pathogenic organisms and yeasts. She managed projects sequencing the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, and was involved in the early stages of many other projects, including Trypanosoma brucei, Plasmodium vivax, and Schizosaccharomyces pombe. Dr. Bowman received both her B.Sc and Ph.D from the University of Warwick, and performed postdoctoral research in both the USA and Canada.
http://www.genomeatlantic.ca

Dr. Shirlyn Coleman

Collaborator
Shirlyn Coleman holds an M.Sc in Plant Science and a Diploma in Education from the University of Western Ontario. As a Senior Potato Development Specialist with New Brunswick Department of Agriculture, and Aquaculture, Shirlyn managed the production of nuclear stock potato plantlets and a national potato tissue culture repository at the Plant Propagation Centre in Fredericton. She is presently the Manager of the Crop Section- Crop Development Branch, NBDAFA. Shirlyn has made many contributions to agricultural policy and innovation in New Brunswick, and she has shared her expertise in tissue culture at numerous invited lectures and training sessions. Shirlyn collaborated with the CPGP in a number of ways: she served as a Provincial Observer for the project, and, during her tenure at the Plant Propagation Centre the Centre provided plant material for the activation tagging and EST projects. http://www.gnb.ca/0027/Index-e.asp

Other Personnel:

  • Mojgan Siahbazi
    Research Technician, Department of Biology, Carelton University

  • Ruben D’Sa
    Co-op student, Centre of Excellence in Agricultural and Biotechnological Sciences (CESAB)
    (Supervisor: Dr. Vicki Gustafson)

  • Michael Carr
    M.Phil. Graduate Student, University of New Brunswick
    (Supervisor: Dr. Keith Culver)

  • J. Patrick Hamilton
    Research Assistant, University of New Brunswick

  • En Zhang
    MCS Graduate Student, Faculty of Computer Science, University of New Brunswick

  • Rachita Sharma
    Ph.D. Graduate Student, Faculty of Computer Science, University of New Brunswick

  • Marc Cooper
    MCS Graduate, Faculty of Computer Science, University of New Brunswick

  • Aijaz Syed
    MCS Graduate, Faculty of Computer Science, University of New Brunswick

  • Jennifer Henry
    M.Phil Graduate Student, University of New Brunswick

CPGP Research Advisory Board Members