Dr. Julie LaRoche, Professor
Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Marine Microbial Genomics and Biogeochemistry
We are currently seeking co-op, Masters & PhD students! See our Current Opportunities page...
Bringing the CMOS 2023 conference to your attention!
We are planning a session on environmental DNA (eDNA) at the upcoming 57th congress of the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS) to be held May 28-June 1, 2023 in St-John’s Newfoundland.
The overall theme of the congress is: “Connecting on the Rock: from the Marine Environment to the Blue Economy”
Our organized session (in collaboration with Dr. Caroline Chénard at the National Research Council Canada) is part of the ocean category and entitled “13. Environmental DNA (eDNA) applications in marine sciences: An ecosystem’s approach from microbes to mammals”.
We Love Marine Microbes!
Welcome to the LaRoche Lab website. Here you'll find info regarding lab personnel, as well as research being conducted by the LaRoche Lab group. We are located in the Department of Biology at Dalhousie University. Our research primarily focuses on Marine Microbial Genomics & Biogeochemistry. We are always interested in hearing from potential collaborators, graduate students, and postdocs. Also, if you are a Dal undergraduate student wondering about biology honours research in our lab, please feel free to contact us.
Lab News
Feb 2023: Ocean research in Bedford Basin reported on by NBC News. Can giving the ocean an antacid help curb climate change?
Sept 2022: Excited to announce another publication on the microbes of the Bedford Basin Monitoring Program, this time focusing on seasonal bacterial niche structures and chemolithoautotrophic ecotypes. Written by former postdoc (now Research Officer at Minderoo Foundation) Dr. Eric Raes.
Sept 2022: Welcome Aboard! New lab members Shannon Myles and Ella Kantor join the LaRoche Lab--both will be starting exciting MSc research projects.
May 2022: Congrats to Becca who successfully completed the Admission to Candidacy exam!
Apr 2022: Congrats to Brent Robicheau, who's first thesis chapter on phytoplankton in the Bedford Basin compared to the Scotian Shelf is now availalble at ISME Communications. Read more on this project at CBC News: Bedford Basin perfect to monitor coastal climate change, scientists say.
Nov 2021: LaRoche Lab members, Shannon Myles and Liam MacNeil, win data contest for their creative ideas on data collection onboard a future Bedford Ferry in Halifax, NS.
Sept 2021: Dr. LaRoche and Dr. Worm of the Dalhousie Biology Department are elected as Royal Society of Canada (RSC) Fellows.
July 2021: The Bedford Basin's Oxygen levels is a hot topic in a recent CBC article.
June 2021: Congratulations to Liam who successfully defended his Master's thesis this month! Read more about Liam's MSc research on phytoplankton classification via holographic microscopy in his recently published article at BMC Ecology and Evolution. :)
June 20, 2021: The LaRoche Lab participates in Ocean Sampling Day!
April 2021: The wonders of nitrification decoupling via biomass dilution are explored in our latest co-authored PNAS paper featuring sampling from the Bedford Basin Time Series. This research was a collaboration between the LaRoche, Wallace, and Algar labs at Dalhousie and ft. PhD students Sebastian Haas, Brent Robicheau, and Subhadeep Rakshit.
March 2021: Congrats to Connor who successfully defended her Master's thesis. Yay! Connor's MSc research was also recently profiled in The Journal of Ocean Technology.