Raegan Plomp - Toxicology - University of Lethbridge

Raegan Plomp is in the final semester of her MSc degree at The University of Lethbridge in the lab of Greg Pyle. Raegan has been studying the effects of copper and forest fire run-off on Hyalella azteca, a freshwater amphipod. Raegan’s work is essential in developing our understanding of how natural environmental discharges, such as forest fire run-off, interact with metal contaminants. Throughout her project, Raegan has had the opportunity to study amphipods from both lab-reared and field-collected populations. Utilizing graphite furnace atomic absorption spectroscopy and ICP-MS, Raegan has been able to expand her research to study trends of multiple metals to investigate whether there are any additional pollutants interacting in this complex. Raegan is currently hard at work composing her thesis and we look forward to reading the final compilation of her results!