Dominique Tertigas is a PhD candidate at McMaster University in the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences in the lab of Dr. Michael Surette. Dominique’s PhD project focuses on the gut microbiome in ulcerative colitis (UC), a type of inflammatory bowel disease characterized by mucosal inflammation of the large intestine. Her work combines lab work with bioinformatics using culturing and molecular microbiology, genomics and metagenomics to discover novel pathogens in UC. Over the years, Dominique has been awarded several scholarships, including the Canadian Graduate Scholarship (Master’s), Ontario Graduate Scholarships, and the Farncombe Institute Graduate Scholarship, to support her research.

Dominique completed her Honours Bachelor of Science in the Integrated Science program at McMaster University with a Concentration in Biology and a Concurrent Certificate in Immunology, Microbiology, and Virology. She was first exposed to gut microbiome research as an undergraduate in Dr. Dana Philpott’s lab at the University of Toronto as a Canadian Association of Gastroenterology summer studentship recipient. Currently, as a PhD candidate at McMaster University, Dominique is a part of McMaster’s Michael G. DeGroote Institute of Infectious Disease Research (IIDR) and Farncombe Family Digestive Health Research Institute. As a trainee in these institutes, Dominique helps organize student-run conferences, plan trainee workshops, and mentor other trainees in learning programming and bioinformatics. In addition to working on her PhD project, Dominique has applied her expertise in microbiome research to additional projects investigating the microbiome in the context of antibiotics, probiotic use, One Health, and more!