Laurier’s Ideas in Fish Science Meeting connects Canadian and British academics, inspiring new research and collaboration

By The Laurier Institute for Water Science (LIWS) | July 4, 2026

In April, the Laurier Institute for Water Science launched the inaugural Ideas in Fish Science: Experts Meeting, a dynamic event dedicated to advancing research and innovation in fish physiology, toxicology, ecology and conservation. Host and organizer Andrew Thompson, a postdoctoral fellow in environmental toxicology at Wilfrid Laurier University, brought leading researchers and experts to Laurier for two days of sharing emerging ideas and learning cutting-edge methods and technical approaches. 

The meeting was opened by Jonathan Newman, Laurier’s vice-president: research, who highlighted the importance of events that advance science through collaboration.

“The most productive collaborations bring together different perspectives, different methods, and often different institutional and national contexts,” said Newman. “They challenge our assumptions, sharpen our questions, and open up possibilities that would not emerge if we worked in isolation.”

Newman welcomed guests from the University of Exeter, a prominent research university in the United Kingdom. Thompson had previously visited the Exeter campus through a Journal of Experimental Biology Travelling Fellowship, where he presented his research and met with researchers in the university's aquaculture program. The experience inspired Thompson to create a similar opportunity for collaboration and knowledge exchange here at Laurier.

“Bringing together researchers from Laurier and the University of Exeter is not just about sharing results – it's about building relationships,” said Newman. “It’s about discovering where interests align, where approaches differ and where there is potential to do something new together. And, importantly, it's about creating the conditions for those conversations to continue beyond today.”

The first session featured three speakers from the University of Exeter showcasing their groundbreaking approaches to fish science: 

• Rod Wilson (left), professor of Integrative Animal Physiology, spoke about the advantages of gill irrigation when blood sampling, highlighting how this approach offers a more representative result of true conditions in living organisms compared to more conventional sampling approaches. 

• Garfield Kwan (center), a Marie Curie postdoctoral research fellow, shared his pioneering techniques for cerebral spinal fluid and endolymph sampling, the diversity of animals they have been applied to and possible questions they could answer.

• Sarah Salisbury (right), lecturer in Sustainable Aquaculture, discussed how single cell RNA sequencing can be used to better understand tissue-specific responses to parasitism and how it can be applied to answer other research questions.

Over the next two days, faculty and staff from Laurier, the University of Toronto and the University of Guelph spoke on the challenges facing discovery and their big ideas to address them:

• Erin Leonard, assistant professor of Biology at Laurier, discussed the need for work investigating multiple stressors and the lessons she has learned from investigating cardiorespiratory responses in fish. 

• Jonathan Wilson, professor of Biology at Laurier, explored the story of the stomach through knockouts from the lab and nature. 

• Cosima Porteus, assistant professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Toronto, spoke about how sensory systems can provide warning for ecosystem changes. 

• Andy Turko, assistant professor of Biology at the University of Guelph, explained how behavioural choice and physiological plasticity can help fish navigate changing environments.

• Mike Wilkie, professor of Biology at Laurier, walked the audience through the robustness and resilience of a notorious invasive species: the sea lamprey.

• Alex Quijada Rodriguez, postdoctoral fellow in Laurier’s Department of Biology, outlined how invertebrate models can be used to inform physiology.

These talks were bookended by keynote speeches from Wilson, who concluded the first day by discussing how gut physiology of marine fish can influence ocean and atmospheric CO2, and opened the second day by discussing how land-based seafood production can occur using recirculating aquaculture systems; Salisbury, who explained how knowledge can be integrated from multiple molecular approaches to support conservation and sustainable aquaculture; and Kwan, who highlighted the importance of knowledge transfer and how one idea can transform global research approaches.

Ideas in Fish Science included long break periods, encouraging student engagement with speakers. A small poster session at the end of the meeting highlighted student research from Laurier to the global audience in attendance. A collaborative brainstorming session gathered all of the principal investigators into the same room, where stimulating discussion and lunch led to a framework for potential grants in the coming year.