.jpg)
(She/Her)
🎙 Tell us about yourself?
My name is Katelyn, and I’m a 2nd-year PhD student in Dr. Andre Simpson’s Environmental NMR spectroscopy group at UTSC. I was born and raised in Montreal, QC, and completed my BSc (Honours) in the Environmental Chemistry specialization program at Queen’s University in Kingston, ON. After completing my PhD, I hope to work in an industry or government research body and aspire to take on a management or other leadership role later in my career.
I have a great passion for music (I play piano, alto saxophone, and sing), theatre, swimming, running, and working with kids. I spent most of my teenage and early adulthood summers as a lifeguard and swim team coach, and since starting my graduate degree at UTSC, I have loved having the opportunity to teach again as a TA
🎙 What are your research interests & what are you currently researching?
My research interests include optimizing low-field NMR spectroscopy (a form of instrumentation for chemical analysis) for environmental monitoring purposes. To date, low-field NMR has seldom been used in any sort of environmental context, but its numerous advantages over traditional environmental monitoring instrumentation could make it an invaluable tool moving forward. I am currently testing different experiment types on the first-ever low-field NMR spectrometer of its kind to help overcome some of its inherent limitations and optimize experimental setups for real-world environmental monitoring applications.
🎙 What is the significance of your current research?
The complex nature of NMR spectroscopy has generally precluded its use in the environmental sciences, and environmental low-field NMR has only been performed by a handful of academics across the globe. However, the financial and physical accessibility, as well as its relatively simple operation, give low-field NMR immense potential to be employed for on-site real-time environmental monitoring.
Since NMR spectroscopy can provide more insight into the chemical composition of/interactions occurring within a sample, it could improve future environmental monitoring by providing more accurate, informative, and reliable data. Therefore, my research is novel in that it explores the potential of environmental low-field NMR, a feat that has yet to be undertaken.
🎙 Any interesting insights/results so far related to your research?
Thus far, using a specialized, newly developed experiment type in our lab (called 13C-DREAMTIME), the production of ethanol from a solution of 13C-labelled glucose and wine yeast has been monitored. Using this technique, all signals in the spectrum were removed except for one representing ethanol and one representing glucose. This resulted in a simple spectrum showing a decrease in glucose and an increase in ethanol concentration over time. Although this is a very simple example, it could be applied to more complex samples for tracing reaction progress or for monitoring contaminant removal in the environment during a remediation project.
🎙 What aspirations do you have for your research? How do you see it being utilized?
I plan to tailor low-field NMR experiments for a number of specific, real-world applications such that in the future, low-field NMR spectrometers could be employed on-site for improved, real-time environmental monitoring. I also hope to successfully set up "in vivo" NMR at low-field, meaning the real-time study of living organisms inside the NMR to monitor ecotoxicologically-induced metabolomic changes.
In the future, low-field NMR spectrometers could be utilized to monitor changes in organism health in remote locations, such as at the Poles, in response to climate change-induced ocean acidification and warming. I hope to also tailor it to detect the presence of oil or other contaminants in water bodies due to leaks in tailing ponds or on oil drilling platforms in a rapid and quantifiable manner. The number of potential applications is endless, and I hope that low-field NMR becomes a common monitoring tool for environmental research bodies.
🎙 Is there anything else you would like to share?
I would just like to sincerely thank CERA for their support and am extremely grateful for the support of my supervisor and other graduate students in our lab.