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Arthropods are found from the tops of the highest mountains to the most northerly and southerly pieces of land on earth.

Our Vision is a complete understanding of the mechanisms that allow arthropods to survive and thrive at low temperatures.

Our Mission is to learn cool stuff about arthropods, to share our knowledge, and to train the very best of the next generation of scientists.

Read about our lab values here

We do our research at  levels of organisation from molecular biology to macroevolution and everything in between.  Check out out the research page to learn more, the people page to find out about the Lab's denizens, and the in the media page, the publications page, or Brent's Google Scholar profile to see what we've already finished. 

Lab meetings and happenings...

Lab News...

September 2023 - Farewell to Jay and Vimbai, and welcome to Arani (a new PhD student), Betty (a new MSc student) and Ayumi (doing her honours thesis).

May 2023 - Welcome to PhD student Mika da Silva Lima and Intern Jay Ing, and lab visitor Menno Bok.

April 2023 - Welcome to our new postdoc Dr. Vimbai Tatsurikirwa! Vimbai will be working on cricket thermal biology in partnership with Aspire Food Group.

January 2022 - Welcome to Julia Hammer, who will be a technician for the first part of 2023.

December 2022 - Congratulations to Lamees Mohammad, who passed her PhD proposal with flying colours! Lamees also got an NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship a couple of months ago, in case we forgot to mention it here!

December 2022 - Congratulations to lab alum Jackie Lebenzon, who won the Detwiler prize for the department's best PhD thesis in the past year. Jackie's thesis also won a Big Deal National Award, but we can't tell you which one yet.

December 2022 - Chief cook and bottle washer won the Faculty of Science Graduate Mentoring Award.

November 2022 - Congratulations to Stefane Saruhashi, who passed her qualifying exam and is now a PhD candidate!

September 2022- We are recruiting a PhD student to work at the interface of applied and fundamental research in partnership with Plant and Food New Zealand. Check out the vacancies page for more info!

September 2022 - Welcome to our new MSc student, Henrique Ho Cesar. Henrique joins us from Queen's University and will be figuring out where the ice is in frozen insects. 

August 2022 - Farewell (sort of) to Zainab and Caitlin who have been our Undergraduate Summer Research Interns. They've got great data (check out their videos here and here), but not quite enough, so they'll be hanging around the lab during the academic year to continue dabbling.And a real farewell to Femi Adewusi, who has been volunteering, tech-ing, and generally helping out since before the pandemic! Femi's hard work and reliability were a huge asset to the lab - go well, Femi, we hope to see you again soon!

July 2022 - Past student Jackie Lebenzon's PNAS paper was in the news! Check out the press release, an article in New Scientist, and the original paper.

May 2022 - Brent (alongside Sapna Sharma at York U, Pamela Templer at Boston U, and Steven Cooke at Carleton U) is organising a Virtual Winter Biology Symposium for June. Check out the schedule and register here.

May 2022 - Congratulations to Alyssa Stephens, who successfully defended her MSc thesis! You can read it here.

May 2022 - Farewell to long-term postdoc Meghan Duell! Meghan was so much more than a postdoc, keeping all sorts of things in the lab functioning, when she wasn't doing all manner of things insect tolerance related.

April 2022 - Congratulations to Stefane Saruhashi, who convinced her committee that Malpighian tubules really are The Best, and passed her PhD proposal assessment!

April 2022 - After a few months that flew by, Chantelle Major has submitted her mini thesis on cold-activation of glycogen phosphorylase and Sylvia Chong submitted her honours thesis on sex differences (or lack thereof) in Gryllus veletis freeze tolerance.

January 2022 - Many congratulations to Dr. Jackie Lebenzon, who defended her PhD thesis with flying colours! You can access this magnificent document here. Jackie is shortly off to the USA, where she will begin a postdoc with lab alumna Caroline Williams at UC Berkeley.

Fall 2021 - A few updates for Fall ... we said farewell to Nasim Amiresmaeili, who finished up her postdoc, Jackie won another award (this time the Rene R. Roth Memorial Award), and everybody chugged along as productively and harmoniously as can be expected, given [waves arms at the world in general].

September 2021 - How can it possibly be September already? In late August we bid farewell to Kevin Ong, who has been in the lab in many different guises for nearly four years. Kevin has transformed into an amazing programmer and solid bioinformatician, and we look forward to seeing where he ends up next. September is also a month of new starts. We're super excited to welcome Lamees Mohammad back into the lab - Lamees ran away to Neuroscience for a while after an internship and honours thesis, but is back to freeze crickets and check out their brains. We also welcome Aaron Mayordomo, an MSc student who will be farming crickets to feed the world, and Sylvia Chong, who will be figuring out the differences in freeze tolerance of male and female crickets.

April 2021 - A very fond farewell to Alex Torson, who is moving on to a Research Scientist position at the USDA in Fargo, North Dakota. Watch out for woodchippers, Alex!

April 2021 - Congratulations to Tania Naseer, who passed her proposal assessment!

April 2021 - Congratulations to Arteen, Ayush, and Zoe, who completed very fine (bioinformatics-based) honours theses under the most difficult of circumstances!

January 2021 - The Sinclair lab is recruiting! We're looking for creative, critical-thinking MSc and PhD students to figure out how insects can survive internal ice formation (and maybe slip in a side trip to the Canadian Arctic. Check out the vacancies page for more info.

January 2021 - A farewell has been bidden to Meaghan Carlson (the assister with writing), and we welcome Amanda Lynn Stubley, who will be wrangling writing on the wresearch wrodeo.

August 2020 - Well, about half of us are still at home, and the other half have been slowly getting into the lab. This month we farewell Lyuquon Zhao, who heads back to China (with a new addition to the family!), and Matt Chung (who was a USRA during this disrupted summer, but he'll still be hanging around in the lab!) We welcome Stefane Saruhashi, a new PhD student who joins us after working on Anostrapha thermal biology for her MSc in Brazil, and Tania Naseer, who comes all the way from Oshawa to start a MSc.

April 2020 - The lab has now been working from home for six weeks because of the COVID-19 pandemic. All things considered, we've done pretty well. Meghan has crickets acclimating at home (we can hear them chirping in the background) so we'll still have freeze tolerant crickets to work with when we're allowed back in the lab, and Yanira is keeping an eye on her fly-babies at home too. Jackie is allowed on campus for short periods to monitor her beetles and potato plants. The rest of us are working 100% from home. We meet up on Zoom every day, and it's been a great opportunity to share knowledge about methods, read articles together, and partake of a Friday afternoon 'Quarantini'. We are grateful to all the healthcare and essential workers around the world who are dealing with the crisis, and to our fellow Ontarians who have stayed home and kept the healthcare system from being overwhelmed!

April 2020 - Congratulations to Alyssa Stephens, who has been awarded an NSERC CGS-M masters scholarship!

January 2020 - Welcome to Catalina Fernández, who is visiting us for the term to freeze pepper weevils, and 'welcome' to Kevin Ong, who has officially started an MSc (although he's been around seemingly forever!) Farewell to Aisa Psenicnik, who has gone on to a Masters degree in the Prairies.

November 2019 - Congratulations to Jackie Lebenzon, who shared the President's Prize for best student presentation and Kurtis Turnbull, who shared the President's prize for best student poster at the Entomological Society of Ontario meeting!

October 2019 - Congratulations to Jackie Lebenzon, who won the J.D. Detwiler award for demonstrated excellence in the Biology graduate program!

September 2019 - Welcome to Alyssa Stephens, who has begun an MSc on cricket freeze tolerance.

August 2019 - Welcome to Nasim Amiresmaeili, who has a Western Research postdoc to work on the thermal biology of parasitoids of the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug. She'll be dividing her time between the Sinclair lab and Tara Gariepy's lab at Agriculture and Agri-food Canada.

August 2019 - The lab has been on the circuit! Alex Torson did a great talk at ISEPEP8 in Buenos Aires (where there were many Sinclair lab alumni, including plenary speaker Dr. Caroline Williams and several of her students - which makes them Brent's grandstudents!). Jackie Lebenzon was runner-up for best student presentation at the ICCPB in Ottawa.

May 2019 - Congratulations to Yanira Jiménez Padilla, who has been awarded an Ontario Graduate Scholarship!

May 2019 - The lab had an outstanding showing at the CSZ annual meeting. As well as a wonderful slate of talks and posters from lab members, Meghan Duell was one of three speakers in the Comparative Physiology and Biochemistry symposium, Jackie Lebenzon was runner up in the W.S. Hoar Award finals for best student presentation, and Alex Torson was a finallist in the Presidents' prize for best postdoc presentation. And...everyone had to put up with all week, who was mostly on stage performing his duties as President of the Canadian Society of Zoologists. The Sinclair lab extended family even got together for a photo (see below).

May 2019 - Welcome to Claire Baragar, who joins us as an NSERC USRA student for the summer!

April 2019 - Congratulations to Yanira Jiménez Padilla, who passed her Qualifying exam, and is now a PhD Candidate.

April 2019 - Congratulations to Dr. Susan Anthony, who defended her PhD thesis with flying colours (no revisions required!). You can hear her talk about it on GradCast here. AND, if that weren't productivity enough, she delivered a healthy baby boy not two weeks later! Welcome to the world, little Finnegan!

March 2019 - farewell to Paul Vinu Salachan, who returns to Denmark after a productive six month visit.

March 2019 - Jantina Toxopeus' research on freeze tolerance in spring field crickets was a topic of discussion on CBC... twice!

February 2019 - We only heard about this now, but congratulations to Jackie Lebenzon, who won the best student poster award for the Division of Comparative Physiology and Biochemistry at the SICB meeting in Florida last month!

February 2019 - The polar vortex brought with it a flurry of media attention about whether the cold will kill emerald ash borer (spoiler alert: it probably won't, but Meghan is looking at cold tolerance of the new population in Winnipeg). The Sinclair lab appeared in a few media outlets, including Western News and Bloomberg.

January 2019 - Our very own Jackie Lebenzon was featured in the Western Gazette - read about diapause (and some pesky mammals) here.

January 2019 - Welcome to Sujan Sadekuzzaman and Seun Esan, who began their PhDs with us. Sujan will be applying his formidable molecular biology skills to Gryllus veletis, while Seun will join Team Beetle.

December 2018 - Kurtis Turnbull is now a PhD Candidate, after passing his comprehensive exam with flying colours!

November 2018 - Congratulations to John Ciancio, who defended his MSc on Brown Marmorated Stink Bug last month. His thesis is now available here.  Look out for a super-solid publication on overwintering biology of this species next year!

November 2018 - Our very own Susan Anthony was interviewed about spider overwintering for an article in geek.com!

October 2018 - Welcome to Paul Vinu Salachan, a visiting PhD students who joins us for six months from Aarhus University in Denmark on a Company of Biologists Traveling fellowship.

October 2018 - Congratulations to Kurtis Turnbull, who was jointly awarded the President's Prize for best student presentation at the Entomological Society of Ontario Annual Meeting.

September 2018 - Congratulations to Dr. Jantina Toxopeus, who defended her PhD with flying colours. You can read Jantina's thesis here. Jantina is off to join Greg Ragland's lab as a postdoc at University of Colorado Denver.

September 2018 - Congratulations to Jackie Lebenzon, who was awarded the Malcolm Ferguson Award in Life Sciences!

August 2018 - Welcome to Meghan Duell, who joins us from Arizona State University as a new postdoc.

July 2018 - Congratulations to Yanira Jiménez Padilla, who passed her PhD proposal assessment!

May 2018 - Welcome to Kendra Corral, who is joining us from Mexico for the summer as a MiTACS Globalink intern.

News archive...

Smiling members of the Sinclair lab with the large bronze statue of the Guelph Gryphon in the background
The Sinclair lab went to the Entomological Society of Ontario meeting in Guelph, and narrowly escaped the talons of the Guelph Gryphon. Back row (l-r): Betty Paton (MSc), Kaitlyn Ludba (PhD), Stefane Saruhashi (PhD); Front row (l-r) Menno Bok (visiting MSc), Brent Sinclair (gryphon bait). Missing: Yanira Jiménez Padilla (PhD), Mika da Silva Lima (PhD), Ayumi Lam (BSc Hons).

Lots of humans standing in front of a shiny ceiling-mounted art installation.

Sinclair lab extended lab family, Canadian Society of Zoologists’ annual meeting, Saskatoon, SK, May 2023. Back (l-r): Claire Baragar (BScHons ’20, now MSc in the McClelland lab, McMaster U); Becca Dean (PhD, MacMillan Lab, Carleton U); Serita Fudlosid (PhD, MacMillan Lab, Carleton U); Dr. Laura Ferguson (PhD ‘17; Assistant Professor, Acadia University); Mia Lauzon (BSc Hons, Ferguson Lab, Acadia U); Taylor Swanburg (MSc, Ferguson Lab, Acadia U); Dr. Katie Marshall (PhD 2014, Associate Professor, University of British Columbia); Emily Black (MSc, Marshall Lab, UBC). Middle (l-r): Dr. Fouzia Haider (postdoc, MacMillan Lab, Carleton U); Dr. Jackie Lebenzon (PhD ’22, Postdoc, Williams Lab, UC Berkeley); Brynne Duffy (BScHons ‘18; PhD, Staples Lab, UWO); Stefane Saruhashi (Sinclair lab PhD student); Jarrett Blair (MSc, Marshall Lab, UBC). Front (l-r): Brent’s head, Brent’s feet. Missing (at the conference, but we lost them in the galleries!): Jantina Toxopeus (PhD ’18, Assistant Professor, St Francis Xavier University) and her students Maranda van Oirschot & Sarah Rokosh; and Hossein Asgari, whose PhD Brent [juniorly] co-supervises with Dr. Natasha Mhatre at Western.