CURRENT LAB MEMBERS
Lab director and principal investigator
Louis-Charles Fortier, Ph.D.
Full professor and head of the lab
Graduate students
Alexia Royer, Ph.D. Candidate
Alexia is a French student who joined our lab in September 2021 as a Ph.D. candidate in the course of a collaborative project between the UdeS and the Université Paris-Saclay in France. She is co-supervised by Pr. Olga Soutourina. Alexia will explore phage-host interactions in C. difficile, with a focus on the receptor used by phages to infect their host.
Marion Saunier, Ph.D. Candidate
Marion is a French student who joined our lab in September 2021 as a Ph.D. candidate in the course of a collaborative project between the UdeS and the Université Paris-Saclay in France. She is cosupervised by Pr. Olga Soutourina. Marion will study a novel antiphage system in C. difficile that is controlled by a riboswitch.
Andrew Umansky, Ph.D Student
Andrew started a MSc project in our lab in January 2021, then passed to the PhD in January 2023. He will be exploring the genetics and host range of C. difficile phages. He obtained the “Excellence Voice Age” graduate scholarship from the UdeS.
Ismail Benmoussa, Ph.D Student
Ismail started his PhD program in September 2023. His project aims at optimizing the anodization process for autodisinfecting aluminum-based antimicrobial surfaces. It is a collaborative project supported by the private companies A3 Surfaces and Rio Tinto. Prof. Gervais Soucy (Fac. of engineering) is the principal investigator of this team project an is the principal supervisor of Ismail and LC Fortier is the cosupervisor. Nathalie Faucheux (Fac. of engineering) is also working on this team project.
Annie Chénard M.Sc. student
After 2 summer trainings in our lab, Annie is coming back for a Master in microbiology. She is the first student from our microbiology program to enter the B.Sc. – M.Sc. bridge program, meaning that she is finishing her last semester (Fall 2022) of her B.Sc. program in Biochemistry, while starting her M.Sc. program in microbiology at the same time. During her master studies, Annie will explore microbial and viral changes upon development of colitis in a mouse model. This project is a codirection with the lab of Nathalie Rivard from the department of immunology and cell biology of the faculty of medicine and health sciences.
Alice Britoh M.Sc. student
Alice obtained her Medical Doctor degree in 2009 and has been working in clinical microbiology for 15 years. She started a M.Sc. program in September 2023 in the Fortier Lab, to work on the development of auto-disinfecting anodized aluminum-based antimicrobial surfaces. It is a collaborative project supported by the private companies A3 Surfaces and Rio Tinto. She is cosupervised by Prof. Nathalie Faucheux from the Fac. of engineering of the U. Sherbrooke. Prof. Gervais Soucy (Fac. of engineering) is the principal investigator of this team project.
Ally Champoux M.Sc. student
Ally has completed a B.Sc. degree in microbiology at U. Sherbrooke. She started her M.Sc. program in microbiology in the Fortier Lab in January 2024. Ally will use a combination of bioinformatics analyses and experimental microbiology to investigate how microbial and viral changes operate during colitis development, using a mouse model. This project is in collaboration with the lab of Nathalie Rivard from the department of immunology and cell biology at U. Sherbrooke.
Research assistant
Suzanne Gascon, M.Sc. – Research Professional
Suzanne is working part-time between our lab and the lab of Nathalie Faucheux at the UdeS faculty of engineering. She works on a NSERC-Alliance COVID project.