Anita C. Benoit

Assistant Professor, Social & Behavioural Health Sciences Division, University of Toronto Scarborough, Dalla Lana School of Public Health 

I'm Mi’kmaw and French Acadian with family living in Esgenoopetitj First Nation and Brantville, New Brunswick. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Ottawa and my M.Sc. from Dalhousie University, both in Microbiology and Immunology. I obtained a M.Sc. from the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation in Health Services Research at the University of Toronto while conducting my postdoctoral fellowship at Women’s College Research Institute. My research interests include Indigenous women’s health, health of racialized individuals, HIV pathogenesis, intervention research, health service outcomes and evaluation, chronic stress and mental health, harm reduction and determinants of health.

Crystal Fielding

Construction Maintenance Electrician and Educator

Crystal knew before finishing high school that she wanted to be an electrician. Without any leads of an apprenticeship after graduating high school, she started college. She completed 5 years of post-secondary education, moving from completing a Public Relations diploma to completing Electronics Engineering Technician diploma while looking for an apprenticeship. She worked a season at Canada's Wonderland as a manager in the Technical Services department and in a factory as an Electronics Assembler before starting her apprenticeship as a 309A Construction Maintenance Electrician.

Crystal’s experience in commercial and industrial construction varied; however, she spent a significant amount of time installing building automation systems: air handling systems, boiler room controls and access control. After a decade in the trade, she transitioned to teaching where she now teaches electronics to electrical apprentices in trade school and is also exploring several entrepreneurship opportunities to expand her knowledge and skills.

Evie Kapur

Sales and Marketing Manger, Universkin Americas Inc.

M.Sc. Student, Specialising in Cosmetic Chemistry, University of Cincinnati

Evie Kapur is a Sales and Marketing Manager at Universkin Americas Inc. She did her B.Sc. in Chemistry from University of Western Ontario. Evie’s current role as Sales and Marketing Manager, allows her to apply her chemical knowledge to the beauty industry, specifically skincare. Universkin’s unique approach to skincare treats each patient based on their skin and formulates elegant products with ingredients that will work for them. Evie is responsible for overseeing day-to-day sales activities, marketing initiatives, and product knowledge training across Canada and into the US. While working with Universkin, Evie is also in the process of completing her Master of Science with specialty in Cosmetic Chemistry at the University of Cincinnati. Her experience and training have inspired her to launch her own brand “Aesthetic Educator”, to focus on increasing accessibility to information regarding safety & beauty for cosmetic procedures and products. Evie continues to further her education in the industry and looks to disrupt the medical aesthetic space with a new standard of transparency.

Larissa Pizzolato

Environmental Scientist and Founder of the Sknowledge Collective

PhD Student, Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences, University of Toronto

Larissa Pizzolato is the founder of the Snow Knowledge Collective (or Sknowledge as it's better known) and is a PhD Student in the Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences at the University of Toronto, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She’s an environmental scientist, educator and a cartography enthusiast that enjoys spending as much time as she can outdoors. Her research is at the intersection of citizen science and education, exploring the use of low-cost technologies to augment existing in-situ data collection activities to support satellite-derived earth observation data validation.

Motivated by the excitement of youth when it snows, her research seeks to complement existing outdoor learning to generate robust datasets to monitor, understand, and ignite discussion about local impacts of climate change. Let's bring science, math, and environmental education outdoors, together! #TogetherWeKnowSnow

Rebecca Sutherland

Species at Risk Officer, Environment and Climate Change Canada

M.Sc. Student, Master of Environmental Science program, University of Toronto

Rebecca is a student intern for the Canadian Wildlife Service at Environment and Climate Change Canada. She recently finished her B.Sc. in Environmental Science and will soon finish her M.Sc. also in Environmental Science (both at the University of Toronto). Rebecca has always had an interest in birds since she was young and participated in citizen science work all her life. She likes to go to local parks in her spare time to do bird surveys to contribute to data collection on eBird and iNaturalist. She mainly taught herself wildlife identification and she is able to identify birds just by listening. Rebecca decided to pursue studying environmental science in school, eventually turning her passion for birds, wildlife, and science into a career. She has experience working in the field surveying fish, studying forests, and working on urban agriculture farms. She also has an interest in urban planning and geography. After completing an internship with EcoSpark, Rebecca now works on Species at Risk conservation for the Canadian government where she utilizes federal conservation policies to be able to recover and prevent species from going extinct in Ontario.

Zoë Ungku Fa’iz

Undergraduate Researcher, Department of Chemistry and Forestry, University of Toronto

Zoë is an undergraduate student completing a specialist degree in Materials Science with a double minor in Chemistry and Forest Biomaterials. She is inspired by the tiny particles that make up our material world. Her interest in learning more about the harmful materials in our environment grew through an internship position with Ocean Uprise by Parley for the Oceans.  She is a member of the U of T Trash Team and has worked on the Fighting Floatables – Seabin Project in partnership with Ports Toronto. Through this research assistantship, she worked with a team that characterized thousands of pieces of microplastics collected from the Toronto Harbour over the summer. Being on the field and in the public eye while conducting this research gave her the opportunity to communicate these findings to curious passers-by such as children, adults, and local news reporters. She is currently working on characterizing and quantifying microplastics being emitted from landfills as leachate in the Rochman Lab at U of T.

Eliana Gonzales-Vigil

Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Toronto Scarborough

Dr. Eliana Gonzales Vigil is the Assistant Professor at the Department of Biological Sciences at University of Toronto Scarborough. Her research involves understanding how plants synthesize metabolites that can cure our illnesses and flavour our foods. By integrating different synthetic fields in her research, such as molecular biology and genomics, Dr. Gonazel-Vigil attempts to understand the role of specialized metabolities for plants and how new traits are acquired through evolution.

Baillie Weiderick

M.Sc. Student in Geography, York University

Baillie returned to school as a mature student after working in retail and restaurant management for +10 years to complete a Bachelor of Environmental Studies. For their B.E.S., Baillie specialized in Environmental Management and then moved on to a Master of Science in Geography at York University, which they plan to complete by 2024. In their time at York, Baillie has worked with Waste Wiki, a research group focusing on policy relating to packaging recovery, recycling, and climate change across Europe and North America. Baillie has had experience in fieldwork monitoring cormorant colonies in Toronto, as well as acting as lead volunteer completing surveys of insects at High Park for community science project “Caterpillars Count”. In their M.Sc., Baillie is focusing heavily on GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and ecological modeling and is deeply interested in restoration ecology and conservation in urban environments.

Anna P A Wheler

User Experience Researcher, Google Cloud

Anna Wheler is a User Experience Researcher at Google. She has a multidisciplinary background, mixing Design (Bachelor), Games (BA), and Computer Science (MSc & PhD). Her skills cover qualitative and quantitative methods, and experience with cross-platform development (web, mobile, desktop, (AR/VR) XR, and robotics). Anna Wheler's core domains are UX, XR, Robotics, Data Analytics, Inclusive Design, and Child-Computer Interaction.