For Sandra Klemet-N’Guessan, growing up in Côte d’Ivoire and Tunisia meant always being close to water. The regular backdrop of family activities would often take place near the tumultuous Atlantic Ocean or the calm Mediterranean Sea.

“I would just look out and wonder about this beautiful, wide water,” she says. “What was going on in there? What’s happening beneath the surface?”

Those questions ultimately led Ms. Klemet-N'Guessan to Trent University’s Biology Department, where she is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in the Environmental and Life Sciences (ENLS) graduate program. Since 2018, she has been a member of the Xenopoulos Aquatic Ecology Lab at Trent, working under renowned aquatic scientist, Dr. Maggie Xenopoulos, on research that aims to understand the indirect effects of human activity on freshwater ecosystems.

Ms. Klemet-N'Guessan is particularly interested in interactions between animals and plants and their environments around waters and their shores. She currently studies the relative nutrient contribution that fish and invertebrates add through excretion to a variety of freshwater lakes and streams.

What’s below the surface

“There’s been a lot of focus on the external sources of nutrients that lead to algal blooms,” she says, “but we've never looked at how much the animals contribute to the nutrient pool in relation to how brown the water is.”

Particularly in North America, the impacts of climate change have triggered a “brownification” of waters, where dissolved organic matter affects how much light filters through and, ultimately, how the whole food network functions.

Ms. Klemet-N’Guessan wants to know how fish like walleye and white sucker, and mayflies, are contributing to the cycling of nutrients in streams and lakes. Through her research, she wants to draw a better picture of what could be happening in the future as Canada’s waters are becoming browner, which is essential to predict the future state of aquatic ecosystems.

Passion projects

It was during high school that Ms. Klemet-N’Guessan discovered a love for biology as an intern at the Pasteur Institute of Tunis. While completing a B.Sc. in Biology at McGill University, her passion for travel grew as she conducted research in Côte d’Ivoire, Barbados, Peru and the United States.

Although the pandemic paused her passion for travel, it hasn’t stopped her from continuing to participate in science outreach activities like “Skype a Scientist” and “Exploring by the Seat of your Pants”. She was also a mentor at FemSteamPtbo. Her efforts to encourage science literacy and inspire the next generation of scientists are part of what Ms. Klemet-N’Guessan sees as her role as a researcher.

“It's really about trying to show people the natural beauty of the world,” she says. “But I also hope that my research can show them that no matter where you come from, what your background is, you can have a space in this field.”

Ms. Klemet-N’Guessan shares her own research through science communication practices on Twitter and Youtube, while promoting efforts and thoughts related to equity, diversity and inclusion. She wants to connect both with the greater scientific community and anyone else willing to learn more about science.

She’s also heavily involved in the Trent community. She is currently serving her second term as president of Trent Graduate Students' Association (TGSA) and she recently joined the University’s anti-racism task force.

“At the end of the day, what I really love is to interact with people and feel that we are part of one big, diverse community.”