MSc Student

William Bigelow (M.Sc.)

Bill Bigelow is currently writing his MSc on the ecology of the black land crab Gecarcinus ruricola. He is originally from New York State, and received a BSc in Biology from Le Moyne College, NY.

Before starting his MSc Bill worked extensively in The Bahamas and The Turks and Caicos islands. Future climate predictions forecast not only an increase in temperature, but also a drying scenario for the Caribbean. Therefore, Bill is also looking at physiological and behavioral responses of crabs at varying degrees of dehydration.

Molly Rivers (M.Sc.)

Molly Rivers is currently writing up her MSc research thesis. Originally from the UK, she studied her undergraduate degree in marine biology and coastal ecology at the University of Plymouth and spent several years working as a research assistant for Nekton Foundation, a deep-sea research and ocean governance charity in Oxford.

Her MSc research focussed on the invasive European green crab (Carcinus maenas), specifically investigating the physiological and behavioural strategies utilized by green crabs to survive the extremely cold and prolonged winter temperatures in Newfoundland, a recently colonized location.  Molly is currently in a PhD program at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.

Rahana Ebrahim (M.Sc.)

Rahana Ebrahim is a current MSc. Marine Biology student at Memorial University looking to study lobster cardiovascular physiology. Originally from Toronto, Ontario, she studied Biology as her undergraduate degree at the University of Ottawa. She has spent several years working at veterinary clinics and her summer working and shadowing at the Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre alongside Ocean Wise Canada, working towards her goal of becoming an Aquatic Veterinarian. Her MSc research is going to focus on decapod crustacean physiology, specifically the lobster heart and the dynamics associated with regional hemolymph flow.

Julienne LeBlanc (M.Sc.)

Julienne gained a general science degree from University St-Anne is Nova Scotia. For the past 10 years she has been working in seafood safety and quality control at NovaWest Labs.  Julienne is currently manager of the NovaWest labs. She has decided to go back to school and will be carrying out a part-time MSc with co-supervisors Dr. Fraser Clark from Dalhousie University on Vibrio infections in farmed oysters.

PhD students

Grace Walls (PhD)

Grace Walls is a PhD student who started in 2021 in the St. FX and Memorial University joint program looking to unravel the mysteries of lobster foraging ecology. She completed her B.S. in Biology with minors in Natural Resource Conservation and Psychology from University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 2013. From there she developed 6 different marine education programs for different NPOs and school systems of her native Cape Cod. Drawn to research, she went aboard the NOAAS Henry B. Bigelow which started off the adventure of hundreds of sea days spent on both fishing and research vessels around the globe.

The majority of her time was spent with the Alaskan fishing fleets based in the Aleutian Islands, sailing in the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska. Migrating to the Baltic Sea for her masters in Biological Oceanography at the University of Kiel (Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel) her thesis monitored the effects of changing environmental conditions on plastic ingestion and feeding ecology of benthopelagic fish. Now switching gears once again and settling benthically to work with invertebrates, Grace is excited to see where the next years will bring her.