In celebration of the successful defences of Najia and Sunanda, the onboarding of our new graduate students Kanwal and Nalan, and Jianping returning home to China (we like to multitask), James treated the lab out to a lunch. Here's to the new steps ahead for our grads, and safe return wishes for Jianping - we will miss you!

Sunanda is the first PhD student attached to the oil sands project in our lab. She successfully defended her thesis on the Immunomodulatory Effects of Oil Sands Process Water: The Role of Naphthenic Acids in Receptor-Mediated Macrophage Activation. 

Najia successfully defends her thesis with a presentation on Establishing a Stable Co-Expression Model and the use of Imaging Flow Cytometry for the Functional Assessments of Zebrafish Immunoregulatory Receptor-types. Congrats, Najia!

Sunanda, Marj, and Nora presented posters at the 12th annual Western Canadian Symposium on Water Quality Research hosted at the University of Alberta. Sunanda's poster also won first place for the Best Poster Award at the conference - congrats, Sunanda!

Sunanda got to catch up with her collaborators in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology and present a poster at the annual Immunet Research Day hosted by the University of Alberta. 

Aoxue and Samuel presented a well-received poster and a talk respectively at the 2025 North American Comparative Immunology Workshop (NACIW) at the University of Dalhousie, Halifax, Nova Scotia. This was Aoxue's first conference as a student in the Stafford lab, and she was also awarded the Diversity Fund Award - congrats Samuel and Aoxue!

The 2025 RE Peter conference showcases interesting research from members of the University of Alberta (and beyond!) at the undergraduate and graduate level. This year, we had three talks given by Samuel (PhD student), Anjiya (BIOL 499), and Nishita (BIOL 499), and two posters from our BIOL 399 students Francesca and Micah. Great presentations, everyone!    

Dr. Jianping Fu, an Assistant Professor in Jiangxi Normal University, joins our lab for one year as a visiting scholar. Jianping is excited to immerse herself in the world of LITRs (and -40​°C winters). 

Sunanda and Nora both presented oral talks at the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) 2024 in Fort Worth, Texas, and got to sightsee with James a little afterwards!

Kareem defended his MSc on microbial bioassays used to examine oil sands process affected water toxicity on a very auspicious Friday the 13th. Congrats, Kareem!