GRADUATE STUDENTS
Gerald Trojillo, MSc/MD student
Gerald first started with the Kowalec Lab as a University of Manitoba Undergraduate Research Awardee in the Summer 2020. Gerald investigated psychiatric genetic risk scores and its connection to disease activity in different types of immune-mediated inflammatory diseases, through data analysis using various R packages. For his thesis, Gerald will be extending this work (as of Sept/22) and began his MSc/MD in Sept/23. Gerald has won multiple awards including the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences Studentship.
Hayley Riel, PhD Student
Hayley is completing her PhD in psychiatric genetics, where she is focusing on resilience across the illness course of schizophrenia. Her research interests focus on understanding schizophrenia and psychosis through the integration of clinical neuroscience, cognition, symptomatology, and genetics. Hayley is trained in EEG technology and combines different modalities to investigate biomarkers for schizophrenia.
Mira Safa, PhD student
Mira received her BSc and MSc in Pharmacy in Lebanon and started with the Kowalec Lab in Jan/2023 as a graduate student. Mira will investigate neurofilament in connection with comorbid depression in multiple sclerosis for her thesis. Mira has won multiple awards including the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences Studentship and the Hilary K. Lerner Memorial Award.
Dr. Laila Aboulatta, PhD Candidate
Dr. Aboulatta has a Bachelor's degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences and a Postgraduate PharmD degree, Alexandria University, Egypt. Currently, Dr. Aboulatta is a PhD student at the College of Pharmacy, University of Manitoba under the co-supervision of Dr. Kowalec and primary supervision of Dr. Sherif Eltonsy. Dr. Aboulatta's current research focuses on the impact of COVID-19 on pregnant women and neonates.
Md. Abdul Aziz, PhD Student
Aziz received his Bachelor's degree in Pharmacy followed by a Master's in Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmacology from Bangladesh. Aziz finds interest in Pharmacogenomics, Pharmacoepidemiology, or Genetic Epidemiology research. His previous research focused on the association of genetic polymorphisms with cancers and neurogenic disorders while his current research focuses on evaluating the pattern of antidepressant use for patients with mood and/or anxiety disorder under the supervision of Drs. Leong (Advisor) and Maruf (Co-advisor). Aziz has won the College of Pharmacy Graduate Fellowship, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences Graduate Studentship, and University of Manitoba Graduate Fellowship. Dr. Kowalec serves on Aziz's supervisory committee.

Research students and volunteers

Gabrielle Villaflor, Undergraduate Summer Student (2024-current)
Gabrielle is a second-year undergraduate student at the University of Manitoba. She is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Health Sciences degree and was awarded a URA for summer 2024. Gabrielle is helping in the analysis of depression polygenic scores and their association with the prevalence of depression in those with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
Jasmine Groisman, Undergraduate Student (2025-current)
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Labiba Rahemina, Undergraduate volunteer (2026 - current)
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Alumnae

PHMD4000 Students
  • Marc Herrera
  • Kathleen Watts
  • Helya Abbasi
  • Kezra Gerbrandt
  • Allison Rose
  • Nina Anastasio
Jiyoo Noh, Grade 12 Student (2024-2025)
In the Kowalec lab, Jiyoo worked on a literature review examining the genetic factors contributing to schizophrenia. Jiyoo is currently attending University in Toronto and hopes to continue work within the field of genetics.
Dr. Urmi Das, Post Doctoral Student (2022-2026)
Dr. Das holds a PhD in Cancer Genetics from the University of Manitoba where she identified aberrant RNA-transcript regions expressed in particular cancer patients carrying specific genetic variants as her research project. While in the Kowalec Lab, her research focused on investigating the genetic architecture of schizophrenia in Sweden, USA and UK. Outside of research, Dr. Das enjoys travelling, hiking and reading.
Rupinder Sahij Pal, Grade 12 Student (2024-2025)
Rupinder was a grade 12 student at the Maples Met School, Winnipeg, MB, when he interned as a student researcher under Dr. Kaarina Kowalec. Following his passion for biological and health sciences, Rupinder completed an innovative project which investigated the correlation between genetic variation associated with various pharmacogenetic traits, and the severe psychiatric disorder schizophrenia. Throughout the journey of his project, he was able to learn and develop upon critical skills, such as analyzing genetic data and academic journals, fundamentals of research ethics, operating statistical computing softwares, advanced molecular biology, and countless others essential life skills.
Haylee Flores, Grade 10 Student (2024)
Haylee is a sophomore at Seven Oaks Met School interned under Dr. Kaarina Kowalec with the goal of narrowing down her wide range of science interests. She has worked on her research project about the “sex differences in mortality due to blood diseases and disorders in Canada” under Dr. Kaarina Kowalec’s guidance during her time here and has now moved to explore her other interests.
Dr. Mina Shirinbakhsh Masoleh, MSc, University of Manitoba
Mina received her PharmD from the Tehran University of Medical Science (Iran) and her PharmD research included an assessment of psychiatric conditions and cognition in patients hospitalized for bone marrow transplantation, which was subsequently published in the Iran J of Psychiatry. Mina received her MSc in Pharmacy at the UM which focused on pharmacoepidemology of antipsychotics in Manitoba during COVID-19 in 2023 with Dr. K.
Francisca Jacobo, URA (2022), Research Student (2023)
Francisca was an undergraduate summer student in the Kowalec Lab Group for the summer 2022 and 2023. She completed her final year of study at the University of Manitoba, majoring in Accounting. She assisted in investigating psychiatric comorbidity in immune-mediated inflammatory diseases using genetics and statistical analysis. Francisca won a University of Manitoba URA award in summer 2022.
Jerlin Joyees, PharmD Student (2022-23)
Jerlin was a student at the College of Pharmacy at the U of M and did a research block with Dr. Kowalec working on investigating sex differences in anxiety in immune mediated diseases in 2022-2023.
Thuy-Dung Nguyen, PhD, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden (2019-2023)
Thuy-Dung has a BSc in Public Health from Hanoi University of Public Health (Vietnam) and a MSc in Public Health Epidemiology from Karolinska Institutet (Sweden). She received her PhD at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet under the co-supervision of Dr. Kowalec and primary supervision of Dr. Yi Lu. Her research focuses on using machine learning to subtyping major depressive disorder (MDD) cases to reduce genetic heterogeneity and predicting long term outcomes of MDD. (Photo: Quang Bui)
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Monserrat Rocio Enriquez, MITAC student (2023)
Monserrat was at the U of M working on a review of treatment resistant schizophrenia. She is a Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Biology student in Mexico. Monserrat is the host of a science outreach TV program, and enjoys playing soccer and basketball, and reading.
Daniel Luo, PharmD research student (2022)
Daniel was a 4th year PharmD student at the University of Manitoba. As part of his final year in the program, he will be completing his research rotation block at the Kowalec Lab at the end of 2022. His focuses will include analysis of clinical data from MS patients treated with dimethyl fumarate in an on-going search for predisposing genomic variants.
Dr. Jing Han, Biostatistician (2021)
Dr. Jing Han received her Ph.D. in Health Economics from the University of Manitoba. Her research focuses on studying issues like health inequality, socioeconomic determinants of health, health behavior, and utilization of health care across population groups using large complex datasets. She joined a research team at the Community Health Science, the University of Manitoba as a post-doctoral research fellow on multiple data-driven and policy-oriented research projects in community health and public health. Dr. Han also worked as a research and evaluation specialist at the Addiction Foundation of Manitoba to support decision-making and quality improvement in areas of addictions and mental health. 
Mitul Patel, Data Analyst (2019-2021)
Mitul has a BSc in Physics (Applied) from St. Mary’s University, UK and a MSc in Theoretical Physics from the University of Manitoba. During his BSc, Mitul worked as an intern at the UK’s National Physical laboratory (NPL) investigating the resistivity of certain materials, NPL is responsible for developing and maintaining the national primary measurement standards. During his MSc, Mitul worked on understanding the physics of the very early universe using string theory.  He has also worked as a short term intern at the University of Winnipeg as a machine learning engineer in the neutrino physics group.  
Brianne Desrochers, Undergraduate summer student (2022)
was a 2nd year PharmD student with the College of Pharmacy at the University of Manitoba. Brianne worked in Dr. Kaarina Kowalec’s lab summarizing the current literature on the predictors of dimethyl fumarate-induced lymphopenia in multiple sclerosis in summer 2022. Brianne’s research interests include pharmacogenetics, oncology, drug safety in mothers and neonates, and pharmacoepidemiology. Upon graduation, Brianne plans to obtain her extended practice certification in oncology. Brianne also won a College of Pharmacy Summer Research award for her time with Dr. Kowalec's group, congrats!
Sarah Lyle, Undergraduate Summer Student (2020)
Sarah was in her 4th year of a Genetics Honours Co-op degree at the University of Manitoba. She is pursued her third co-op work term under the supervision of Dr. Kowalec in 2020. Sarah’s pervious Co-op work terms have involved the study of infectious disease including Influenza and Ebola. Sarah studied the connection between psychiatric genetic risk scores and immune-mediated inflammatory disease outcomes.
Heather Carney, Undergraduate Summer Student (2019, 2020)
Heather began in the Kowalec Lab as a recipient of a 2019 and 2020 College of Pharmacy Undergraduate Research Award. Heather was in her third year of the BSc Pharmacy program at the University of Manitoba. Heather previously completed a BSc in Environmental Science with a focus in Chemistry at the University of Winnipeg where she received an NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award to study the quantification of organic contaminants in environmental waters. Heather studied the rate of substance use disorder in those with inflammatory bowel disease and rheumatoid arthritis.
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Gabriel Luo, Undergraduate Summer Student (2019)
Gabriel began in the Kowalec Lab as an undergraduate summer student in Summer 2019. Gabriel was a 4th year pharmacy student at the University of Manitoba. In the past, he's worked with nanoparticles used as drug delivery systems for combating HIV/AIDS.  He assisted with a project investigating pharmacogenomic approaches to therapies used in multiple sclerosis to prevent adverse drug reactions.