Steering Committee
Dr. Michael Campbell is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Lakehead University. He is a synthetic chemist who is focused on developing new ways to use the cyclotron and to make use and access to radionuclides easier. Prior to joining Lakehead University as a TBRRI-LU research chair he was Director of cyclotron operations and led the effort to get the Thunder Bay cyclotron facility up and running. He completed his PhD at the University of Waterloo and his BSc at the University of New Brunswick.
Dr. Amarjit Chahal is the Manager of Business Development with the Thunder Bay Regional Health Research Institute. He plays a key role in identifying and pursuing business opportunities that are in alignment with the Institute's strategic plan. This is achieved by facilitating market analysis, monitoring emerging industry trends and preparing portfolio analysis for a series of high potential opportunities including patenting, licensing and commercialization of intellectual property as well as seeking opportunities for the Clinical Trials facilities. In the past, Dr. Chahal has worked for the Dynacare Medical Laboratories (located in Thunder Bay, Ontario and Laval, Quebec) as a Forensic Specialist, Technical Leader and Business Development Manager, with Vita-Tech Canada Inc. (now IDEXX in Markham, Ontario) as the Director of the DNA Diagnostics Division, and the National Legal Laboratories (now Laboratory Corporation of America, East Lansing, Michigan) as the Assistant Laboratory Director. He has completed two years of postdoctoral fellowship at the Children’s Hospital in Charleston, South Carolina where he conducted research on genetic disorders in humans. He obtained a doctoral degree in a Collaborative Program in Plant Genetics from the University of Guelph, Ontario.
Dr. Muhammad Khalid is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Lakehead University. His areas of research include bio-inspired engineering, fluid-structure interactions, multiphysics computational modeling, and nonlinear dynamics. He has experience of more than 14 years of teaching and research in different institutions in Canada (University of Alberta), U.S. (University of Virginia), China (Peking University, Beijing Computational Science Research Institute, and Jiangsu University), and Pakistan (National University of Sciences &Technology). Thus far, he has published over 50 journal articles and peer-reviewed conference papers on reputed national and international forums.
Dr. Brenda Magajna is the Science and Environmental Studies PhD Program Facilitator and International Student Liaison at Lakehead University, Thunder Bay. Her PhD research focused on survival strategies of the foodborne pathogen Campylobacter jejuni.
Dr. Wensheng Qin received his Bachelor and Master's degrees (1986 & 1989) from the Faculty of Agriculture and Biotechnology at Zhejiang University in China. Then he worked in Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences and conducted visiting research in the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He earned his PhD degree in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology in 2005 from Queen's University in Canada. He further received his postdoctoral training at Stanford University in USA in Biochemistry and Biotechnology. Apart from the aforementioned studies, he worked in several other institutions including University of Waterloo and University of Toronto in Canada, National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico, Kansas State University and Yale University in USA. Qin joined Lakehead University in 2008 as an assistant professor in biotechnology and Ontario Research Chair in Biorefining Research (2008-2013). He holds expertise in biomass conversion for biofuels and bioproducts, microbial engineering and fermentation, molecular biology and biochemistry. Qin was an associate editor for the UK Journal of Applied Microbiology and Letters in Applied Microbiology and advisor for the UK Biochemical Journal. He is currently serving in the editorial boards of 16 scientific journals. Qin has published over 180 peer-reviewed papers and 12 book chapters. He is now a professor at Lakehead University Canada. For more information about his research and publications, please click: https://wqin.lakeheadu.ca.
Dr. Sarita Shrestha is a PhD graduate from the Biotechnology PhD Program, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. She has her bachelor and master degree in Microbiology. Her interest spans around microbiology and biotechnology for the sustainable development of value-added products from wastes and agricultural wastes valorization.
Dr. Ali Tarokh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Lakehead University. He has been actively involved in academic and industrial R&D for the past decade in the areas of Computational Fluid Dynamics, thermo-fluid numerical analysis, reactive flow simulation, and turbulence modelling. He has developed and taught several engineering courses at different Canadian Universities such as the University of Calgary, University of Alberta, Memorial University of Newfoundland, and Lakehead University.