Executive Team

Melike Schalomon

After beginning her university education in Medicine in her native Germany, Dr. Schalomon immigrated to Canada. She holds a BSc in Behavioural Neuroscience at Laurentian University, as well as an MSc in Psychology and PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Alberta. Her research is focused on behavioural neuropharmacology in zebrafish.

Dr. Schalomon joined MacEwan University in Edmonton as a sessional instructor in 1996 and currently holds a faculty appointment as Professor of Psychology. She served as Associate Dean, Operations for seven years prior to her appointment in 2020 as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science. MacEwan’s Faculty of Arts and Science has 200 tenure / tenure track faculty members and approximately 4,700 FLEs across nine academic departments.

Jonathan Withey

Dr. Jonathan Withey held undergraduate and graduate degrees in Chemistry from the University of Oxford. He started his academic career in 2004 at MacEwan University (Edmonton). He has been Dean of the Faculty of Science & Technology at Mount Royal University (Calgary) since January 2017. The Faculty offers a Bachelor of Computer Information Systems program as well as a variety of majors within its Bachelor of Science degree. There are approximately 90 full-time faculty and 2,000 students in Science & Technology at Mount Royal.

Kristin Baetz

Dr. Kristin Baetz is the Dean of the Faculty of Science at
the University of Calgary, Alberta. Dr. Baetz’s research program exploits the model organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae and a variety of systems biology approaches to understand the basic cellular mechanisms of cancer and
neurodegeneration. Dr Baetz was a CRC Tier II (2005-2015), and her work is published consistently in high-impact journals such as PNAS, PLoS Genetics, Metabolic Engineering, Nature Cell Biology and Developmental
Cell. Dr Baetz served as Associate Editor at Biochemistry and Cell Biology and has extensive reviewer experience at CCSRI, CIHR, NSERC and NFRF. Dr. Baetz is also extensively involved in advocacy efforts to improve the research funding ecosystem in Canada.  She is an advocate for equity, diversity and inclusion in STEM and runs and participates in a variety of workshops and events
at both the local and national level.

Line Lapointe

Professor Line Lapointe is a plant ecophysiologist specializing in spring geophytes. Several of her laboratory’s research projects focus on the mechanisms that control resource allocation patterns, as well as on adaptation to cold in these species. This work includes the study of the annual carbon balance in perennial species, source-sink relationships and their effects on growth rates, and the study of the mechanisms that control leaf lifespan. She has also conducted work on understory herbaceous plants in maple groves, including the impact of the overabundance of white-tailed deer and climate change on their growth and reproduction. Some of these species are of commercial interest and projects for cultivation under forest cover (agroforestry) are also being carried out.

Travis Fridgen

Currently the Interim Dean of Science at Memorial University, Dr. Fridgen began his academic career in chemistry at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. His original plan was to teach high school chemistry and was accepted concurrently into Science at Trent and the Faculty of Education at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. After completing an Honours Thesis in Chemistry in Dr. J. Mark Parnis’ lab studying the reactions of O(¹D) with organic and inorganic molecules in argon matrices (1993) he finished his B.Ed. (1994). His thirst for both research and teaching set him on a slightly different trajectory and he began graduate studies at in the Chemistry Department at Queen’s spectroscopically characterizing matrix isolated products of electron bombardment of organic species (1999).

Following his Ph.D., Dr. Fridgen began postdoctoral studies (1999-2003) in the Chemistry Department at the University of Waterloo.  Prior to arriving at Memorial Dr. Fridgen was an Assistant Professor at Laurier where he first began spectroscopically characterizing trapped gaseous ions in collaboration at the Centre Laser Infrarouge d’Orsay (CLIO) just outside Paris, France.