Faculty

The Faculty of Science is committed to the integration of teaching and research. Science research covers a broad spectrum of fields with a focus on extensive undergraduate student involvement. Faculty are committed to the mentoring and training of undergraduate students in directed studies and honours courses, and graduate students in the Master of Science in Environmental Sciences.

Active research in science

The following is a list of faculty who have active research projects with recent publications.

Biological Sciences

Lyn Baldwin, PhD
Research Focus: How natural processes and anthroprogenic disturbances affect vascular and bryophyte plant communities and their conservation.
» Bio

Naowarat (Ann) Cheeptham, PhD
Research Focus: microbial diversity and the search for useful natural and biochemical products, with an emphasis on antibacterial and antifungal compounds.
» Bio

Louis Gosselin, PhD
Research Focus: the ecology of early juvenile marine invertebrates relating to population management in native and introduced species.
» Bio

Matthew Reudink, PhD
Research Focus: the behavioural ecology of migratory birds, particularly the influence of seasonal interactions on life history and ecology.
» Bio

Jonathan Van Hamme, PhD
Research Focus: the development of biocatalysts to aid in the degradation of environmental pollutants.
» Bio

Eric Bottos, PhD
Research Focus: Microbial ecology, with a focus on understanding controls on microbial community dynamics in changing Arctic and Antarctic ecosystems.

Robert Higgins, PhD
Research Focus:The ecology of ants in the forests of British Columbia. Particular interests in the relationship between ants and coarse woody debris.
» Bio

Mark Rakobowchuk, PhD
Research Focus: Human vascular adaptations to physiological perturbations, the interplay between platelets and vascular health, microvesicles and progenitor cells and their role in exercise induced adaptations.
» Bio

Donald Nelson, PhD
Research Focus: Application of molecular techniques to the study of embryonic development and neuroscience.
» Bio

Gregory Anderson, PhD
Dr. Greg Anderson is a Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Science at Thompson Rivers University. Research Focus: Exercise and occupational physiology exploring the health and well-being of athletes across diverse age and ability and public safety professionals.

Chemistry

Sharon Brewer, PhD
Research Focus: Analytical method development, water and wastewater treatment, environmental monitoring, soil chemistry, chemical education and online learning
» Bio

Nelaine Mora-Diez, PhD
Research Focus: computational physical organic chemistry and its applications to environmental, pharmaceutical or biochemical problems.
» Bio

Kingsley Donkor, PhD
Research Focus: the study of binding characteristics of metal-lantibiotic complexes and the application of chemometric techniques in identifying sources of pollution.
» Bio

Heidi Huttunen-Hennelly, PhD
Research Focus: the investigation of structure-activity relationships and mechanism of action in antimicrobial peptides through traditional & novel methods.
» Bio

Dipesh Prema, PhD
Research Focus: Synthetic inorganic/organometallic chemistry, catalysis and sustainability. NMR. Science and the Law. Equity, inclusion and diversity in chemistry education.
» Bio

Bruno Cinel, PhD
Research Focus: Science and chemical education with a focus on the use of remote instrumentation for laboratory and classroom activities and the assessment of laboratory learning outcomes.
» Bio

Computing Science

Piper Jackson, PhD
Research Focus: Simulation, data science, software development, HCI, gerontology, transdisciplinarity.
» Bio

Yan Yan, PhD
Research Focus: Bioinformatics, Machine Learning, Complex Network and Big Data Analysis.
» Bio

Mila Kwiatkowska, PhD
» Bio

Mahnhoon Lee, PhD
Research Focus: Web Technologies, Machine Learning, Clustering, Soft Computing.
» Bio

Musfiq Rahman, PhD
Research Focus: Security in emerging wireless networks in particular - wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Near Field Communication (NFC), Cloud Security, Smartphone Applications.
» Bio

Haytham El Miligi, PhD
Research Focus: Machine Learning applications in healthcare, security and education. Data analytics and federated learning techniques. Big Data framework solutions. Analysis of behavioral biometric using deep learning techniques. Detecting malicious activities on smartphones and IoT devices using reinforcement learning.
» Bio

Mathematics

Mohamed Tawhid, PhD
Research focus: optimization, operations research, modeling and applied analysis.
» Bio

Roger Yu, PhD
Research focus: graph theory and discrete optimization.
» Bio

Projects:
Integrated Analysis for Land Usage in Kamloops (Summer 2015)
Principal investigators: Mauricio Cervantez-Muratalle and Roger Yu (yu@tru.ca)
The aim of the study is to develop an integrated land assessment system for the city of Kamloops, by considering its three major land resource sectors (agriculture, forestry and grasslands). The system involves using goal programming which allows multiple goals and priorities to be included in the model. The analysis will provides information for decision making and long-term policy making.

Balancing Development & Environment Protection in Ajax Mine -- A mathematical and systematic analysis (Summer 2015)
Principal investigators: Jie Jian, Lan Ma and Roger Yu (yu@tru.ca)
The research project study Ajax Mine, proposed by KGHM International for an open pit copper and gold mine near the city limits of Kamloops. The proposal has been met with much controversy among the citizens of Kamloops questioning the environmental impact of the mine. The study evaluates the direct impact of Ajax’s mining operation to the local community, and to explore the trade-off between the profit of Ajax mine and its environmental impact in terms of air pollution, wasted water discharge and recycled. The goal of the project is to find a balance between the company's desire to increase revenue and community's demand for less environmental impact.

Rick Brewster, PhD
Research focus: Discrete mathematics; theoretical computer science; computational complexity; graph theory; polynomial time algorithms and good characterizations; graph homomorphisms and colouring problems; domination problems; graph packings and matchings; local search heuristics and discrete optimization.
» Bio

Yana Nec, PhD
Research Focus: Applied analysis and fluid mechanics.
» Bio

Bruce Crofoot, PhD
Research Focus: Complex analysis, harmonic analysis, and operator theory.
» Bio

Mateen Shaikh, PhD
Research Focus: Computational statistics; Statistical and Machine learning, both supervised and unsupervised. Analysis methods to unusual and new kinds of data which and pose analysis challenges, particularly computational issues in implementation.
» Bio

Jabed Tomal, PhD
Research Focus: Statistical machine learning; Bayesian statistical inference; statistical ecology; analysis of longitudinal and event history data; medical and health care data analysis.
» Bio

Sean McGuinness, PhD
» Bio

Physics

Joanne Rosvick, PhD
Research Focus: Open cluster-planetary nebula associations, star formation, and stellar evolution.
» Bio

Geology

Nancy Van Wagoner, PhD
» Bio

Natural Resource Sciences

John Church, PhD
Research Focus: the exploration of innovative practices and technologies aimed at increasing sustainability and enhancement of the cattle industry.
» Bio

Lauch Fraser, PhD
Research Focus: testing the theories of community ecology, especially community composition, coexistence, complexity and species diversity.
» Bio

Brian Heise, PhD
Research Focus: the effects of various land use practices on aquatic ecosystems, particularly streams.
» Bio

Karl Larsen, PhD
Research Focus: the ecology of mammals, reptiles and amphibians, particularly dispersal in juveniles and conservation.
» Bio

Thomas Pypker, PhD
Research Focus:  how disturbance affects biophysical processes of managed ecosystems at scales ranging from the leaf to whole watersheds. Nationally and internationally, my work focuses on how management and climate change affects biophysical processes in a variety of ecosystems.
» Bio

Mike Flannigan, PhD
Research Focus: Fire Weather, Fire Management, Predictive Services and Climate Change.
» Bio

Jill Harvey, PhD
Research Focus: Investigating wildfire and drought as processes driving ecosystem change to help inform forest and fire management practices and enhance resilience in Canada’s forests.

Wendy Gardner, PhD
» Bio

Courtney Mason, PhD
Research Focus: Histories of Tourism, Parks and Protected Areas; Rural Food Security and Sovereignty; Indigenous Methodologies and Land-Use Management; Conservation Fishing.
» Bio

Engineering

Faheem Ahmed, PhD
Research Focus: Software Engineering, Software Architecture, Software Product Line, Software Process Assessment, Open Source Software, Green Computing, Software Metrics, Software Testing.
» Bio

Catherine Tatarniuk
Research Focus: General Engineering: Engineering Education, Engineering Ethics, Engineering Design. Geotechnical Engineering: Ground Improvement, Mechanical Behaviour of Clay, Numerical Modelling in Geoengineering, Slope Instability
» Bio

Muhammad Hanif, PhD
Research Focus: Wireless communications, Machine learning, 6G wireless communications, Information theory, Internet of Things
» Bio

Geoff Fink, PhD
Research Focus: Robotics, visual servoing, sensing, perception, state estimation, and simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM).

Yasin Mamatjan, PhD
Research Focus: Translational Research in Bioinformatics and Biomedical Engineering; Physiological Monitoring Systems; Biomedical Image and Signal Processing; Genomic Big Data and Machine Learning for Cancer Classification and Prediction.

Saiqa Aleem, PhD
Research Focus: Software process assessment, artificial intelligence & robotics, machine learning

Munima Jahan, PhD
Research focus: Machine learning, deep neural networks, artificial intelligence, requirements verification, distributed software systems, natural language processing, model driven software engineering

Sina Keshvadi, PhD
Research focus: Internet Security, Internet Measurement, and Web Application


Emeritus

Tom Dickinson, PhD
Research Focus: I am interested in how human and natural disturbance affect wildlife! My research has ranged from the causes of limb deformities in amphibians, to the disturbance caused by back country recreation on mountain caribou, to the effects of forestry on songbirds. All this derives from a basic interest in animal behaviour!
» Bio

David Williams, MSc

Mairi MacKaym, PhD

Doug Bickley, PhD

Colin James, PhD