Successful PhD defence

Success

I am excited to announce that I successfully defended my thesis this week! I am overjoyed to have reached this milestone. I couldn’t have done it without a great deal of help, mentorship, and support from my family, friends, collaborators, technicians, lab mates, and co-authors. It is impossible to individually thank everyone who contributed to the last five years, but I wanted to copy the acknowledgments section of my thesis here:

“Thank you to my parents, Cathie and David; my grandparents, Isobel and Doug; my siblings, Sharon and Doug; my extended family, Donna, Jim, Nicole, and Marina; and my dearest friends, Alex and Amanda, for your unconditional love and support. You make me brave.

I am very grateful for my amazing supervisor, Clément Bataille. You e-transferred me two grand in 2018 and told me to fly to Texas and collect milkweed. The adventure never stopped. Your passion for science, candidness, adept sense of humour, and endless optimism make you the best supervisor I could have ever hoped for. Thank you for moulding me into a scientist; I hope to make you proud.

Thank you to everyone at the University of Ottawa who helped me along the way; there are too many people to name. I want to thank the SAiVE lab members, especially Felipe, Julian, Sana, and Eve, for all the laughs and chats about butterflies and isotopes. Thank you to the Kharouba lab for including me in lab meetings and teaching me about butterfly ecology. Thank you to everyone on the BGSA and GSAED councils with me; I hope our efforts made the university a better place. Thank you to Genevieve for always sharing your popcorn.

Graduate school is always difficult, but graduate school during a pandemic was especially stressful. Thank you to my D&D crew, who made me feel safe during the first wave, especially Emma, KJ, Michelle, Chris, and Kevin. Thank you to Mark and Martin for keeping me sane(ish) during the second wave. And thanks to Team Awesome and Dani for our picnic adventures during the third wave.

I also want to thank my international collaborators. Thank you to everybody at SPATIAL and on the ORIGIN project for teaching me about isotopes. I hope our collaboration will develop further in the future. Thank you to Gerard Talavera for sharing his endless curiosity and joy for science and for encouraging me to think big. Thank you to all the iLink members and my friends at IBE and IBB, especially Aurora and Roger. I will never forget our misadventure with the angry lifeguard in Prague. Also, a big thanks to the Backström lab at Uppsala University for hosting me for six months on a Mitacs Globalink Research Award. Thank you, Niclas, for letting me stretch my wings and take over your lab space, and thank you to my labmates for teaching me what a spex is and treating me to weekly fika. Huge thanks to Dasha for cake and her patience as she taught me the basics of population genomics from scratch – you’re a rockstar.

I also want to express my gratitude for my little covid-kitty, Milo, who has been my constant companion while writing this thesis. Finally, thank you to the monarchs, painted ladies, and plants used in these studies.”

Thank you all!!