Principal Investigator
Dr. Alexander Mark Weber MSc, PhD (He / Him / His)
Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Division of Neurology, Faculty of Medicine, UBC
Associate Member, Department of Neuroscience and School of Biomedical Engineering, UBC
Independent Investigator, BC Children's Hospital Research Institute, UBC
Alex was born and raised in Barrie, Ontario. He did his Bachelor’s of Science at the University of Toronto majoring in Chemistry, with a double minor in Mathematics and Philosophy. His Master’s was in Neuroscience and Physiology in Dr. Elise Stanley’s lab doing electrophysiology of dorsal root ganglia neurons of baby chicks. For his PhD, he moved to Hamilton and went to McMaster for Biomedical Engineering, where he joined Dr. Michael Noseworthy’s lab. There he did research on children with obsessive compulsive disorder using functional MRI and magnetic resonance spectroscopy. After completing his PhD, Alex moved to Whitehorse to work with youth in group homes for the Government of Yukon. After two years, Alex then moved to Vancouver and joined Dr. Alexander Rauscher’s lab at UBC. For four years he used diffusion tensor imaging, myelin water imaging, and susceptibility weighted imaging to investigate white matter health in youth with sports concussions, and the developing brains of newborns.
In his spare time, Alex loves to read, run, rock climb, slackline, backcountry snowboard, and ice climb. He would like to one day learn how to sail and paraglide.
Email: aweber@bcchr.ca
Twitter: @AlexMarkWeber
Github: github.com/weberam2/
Profile: bcchr.ca/aweber
Trainees
Olivia Campbell (She / Her / Hers)
Master’s Student in Biomedical Engineering
Olivia was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario. She completed her undergraduate degree at UBC with a Combined Major in Life Science, Physics, and Computer Science. She joined the Weber Lab in April 2020 as a co-op student for two terms and stayed on part time as a Research Assistant. In May of 2021, she started her Masters of Applied Science in the School of Biomedical Engineering. Her project involves investigating the fractal nature of the BOLD signal of resting state functional MRI signals, and its clinical and neuroscience applications.
In her spare time, she enjoys running, hiking, surfing, cross-wording, travelling, and puzzles.
Anna Zhu MClSc (She / Her / Hers)
Master’s Student in Biomedical Engineering
Anna was raised in Toronto, Ontario. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto with a double Major in Neuroscience and Molecular Biology. Shortly after, she began working in the provincial healthcare sector conducting analysis work. During this time, she also became a technical research assistant at the UHN Toronto Rehabilitation Institute (KITE Research Institute) with the Winter Lab under Dr. Geoff Fernie and Dr. Atena Roshan Fekr. Alongside work, she continued her academic studies and pursued a Master of Clinical Science at Western University. She joined the Weber Lab in May 2021 as a Master’s of Applied Science student in the School of Biomedical Engineering. Her project involves developing and investigating the cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen in newborns using advanced MRI methods such as quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) and arterial spin labelling (ASL).
In her spare time, she enjoys ultimate frisbee, board games, hiking, cooking, and swimming.
Allison Mella (She / Her / Hers)
Master's Student in Neuroscience
Allison was born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Alberta with a Bachelor of Science with Honors in Neuroscience. Afterwards, she worked as a research assistant for Dr. Lawrence Richer in the Pediatric Autonomic Clinic at the Stollery Children's Hospital. She joined the Weber Lab in September 2021 for her Master's in Neuroscience in the Faculty of Medicine at UBC. Her project investigates the metabolic, functional and structural pathology of Rett Syndrome though using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques of magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), functional MRI (fMRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI).
In her spare time she enjoys reading, travelling, hiking and running.
Alumni
Johann Drayne (He / His / Him)
Co-op Student
Johann was born and raised in County Antrim, Ireland. He has completed three years of my undergraduate degree in Physics at UBC, with one more to go. Johann joined the Weber Lab in January 2021 as a co-op student. His project involves looking at the connection between sucrose treatment for preterms newborns and their fractal resting state fMRI behaviour.
In his spare time, he enjoys running, walking, cooking, history, and electronics.
GitHub: github.com/johann997