Our Team

Marcel van de Wouw

Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD in Anatomy and Neuroscience, University College Cork
Project Title: Role of gut microbiota in neurodevelopment and mental health
T. 403.441.8472
marcel.vandewouw@ucalgary.ca

Marcel, originally from the Netherlands, did his PhD at University College Cork in Ireland at the Department of Anatomy and Neuroscience and APC Microbiome Ireland. He focused on investigating the therapeutic potential of modulating the microbiota-gut-brain axis in stress- and neurodevelopmental disorders. After this, he stayed for a 1-year postdoctoral position researching whether a specific probiotic formulation can reduce obesity symptomatology in healthy overweight/obese adults.

Leila Rezaei

Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD in Chemical Engineering, Dalhousie University
Project Title: Investigation of gut microbiome metabolism and host-microbe interactions in mental health, neurodevelopment, and health behaviors
T. 403.441.8470
leila.rezaei@ucalgary.ca

Leila earned her PhD from Dalhousie University, where she specialized in the reconstruction and validation of genome-scale metabolic models. Her research focused on applying these models to understand the complexity of cellular metabolism and biological systems.

Dana Watts

PhD Student
MSc in Experimental Psychology, University of Calgary
Project Title: Examining the association between prenatal stress and child executive function
dana.watts@ucalgary.ca

Dana graduated with MSc in Experimental Psychology and BA Honours in Psychology from the University of Calgary. She is completing her PhD in Clinical Psychology under the supervision of Dr. Giesbrecht in Fall 2023. Her past research focuses have included exploring the relationship between cannabis use during pregnancy and its association with childhood development, and exploration into how wearable technology can be used in psychobiological research.

Anika Mamun

Master's Student
BSc in Biological Sciences, University of Alberta 
Project Title: Interactions between the gut microbiome, host genetics, and sleep quality in infants
anika.mamun1@ucalgary.ca

Anika graduated with a BSc in Biological Sciences from the University of Alberta. Her past research endeavours include studying the implementation and evaluation of pediatric mental health and addictions care in the emergency department. Her primary research interests involve studying intergenerational transmission and genetic signatures of stress during gestation with relation to neurodevelopmental outcomes in children. Additionally, she's passionate about increasing Pan-Asian recruitment and retention in clinical research.

Vidhi Desai

Honours Student
BSc in Psychology
Project title: TBD

Vidhi is an upcoming Bsc Honours Psychology student. Her past research interests include the etiology of infectious diseases, as well as researching epidemiological trends in the rise of infections amongst the Canadian population. This summer, she will be researching the influence of wildfire smoke on the infant gut microbiome. Her research will be funded by PURE.

Melinda van Sloten

Research Program Manager
T. 403.441.8414
mmzwart@ucalgary.ca

Melinda graduated with distinction from UCalgary with a BA in Psychology. She has been with the team since April 2020 and has been the project coordinator for the Pregnancy during the Pandemic study since August 2021. 

Dr. Beatrice (Pui Yee) Lai

Data Manager
Beatrice graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong with a Ph.D. in Psychology. She is interested in pregnancy stress and child mental health. She has joined the team to assist in managing the data.

Amnish Brar

Research Assistant

Amnish was born and raised in Calgary and recently completed her psychology degree at the University of Calgary. She also completed an honours project under the supervision of Dr. Giesbrecht titled, "The association between Mediterranean diet adherence and childhood internalizing problems". Her current research interest is understanding the role of nutrition as a predictor of childhood mental health outcomes.

Cleo Hendrickson

Research Assistant

Cleo is working on her BSc Psychology and BSc Biological Sciences at University of Calgary. This past summer she worked with Julia to code heart rate variability and completed a summer studentship which focused on discovering if HRV is a biomarker for academic test performance. Upon graduation, Cleo plans to pursue a Master's degree in Neuroscience and go into the field of research as her career. 

Anamika Kambo

Research Assistant

Anamika has graduated from the University of Calgary with a BA in Psychology and an embedded certificate in Mental Wellbeing and Resilience. She is currently on the last steps of completing her MSc in Health Psychology from the University College of London. Her past research experience has included working on the BMT Study at The Tom Baker Cancer Centre where she submitted an abstract to Cell Therapy Transplant Canada 2021 titled “The Benefits of Psychosocial care services for Distressed Cancer Patients Treated with Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation: Proposal for a Longitudinal Retrospective Study.

Rogaya Khelif

Research Assistant

Rogaya has joined the Developmental Psychobiology lab to provide support for the French side of the Pregnancy during the Pandemic study. She is currently working on completing her BSc in  Psychology at the University of Calgary.

Emily Ward

Research Assistant

Emily recently completed her Bachelor of Science in Psychology at the University of Calgary. She joined the Developmental Psychobiology lab to help with the Pregnancy during the Pandemic study. More recently, Emily has been completing an independent research project under the supervision of Dr. Giesbrecht. Emily’s project investigates the associations between objectively measured daily physical activity level and the HPA axis function during pregnancy.