Assistant Curator
email: shegelsk@ualberta.ca
I have been the Assistant Curator at the Strickland Museum since September, 2020. As Assistant Curator, I am actively working towards the complete digitization of our collection so it can be made available to researchers and the public through the University of Alberta Museums search site.
I spent 5 years in the Canadian Armed Forces before pursuing my BSc at Concordia University of Edmonton, and ultimately completing my PhD at University of Alberta. My PhD research involved the population genetics and correlates of dispersal in the forest pest, mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae). In particular, I focused on how morphology and transcriptomics relates to flight performance, as well as how mountain pine beetle spread across Alberta.
I am also a lecturer at the University of Alberta, and I teach entomology courses such as ENT 101 (Insect-Human Interactions) and ENT 392 (Medical and Veterinary Entomology).