Iza Pawlowski from the Halfar Lab wins the best poster award

Iza Pawlowski, MSc student in the Halfar Lab, won the best poster award at the 2026 Queen’s Northern Research Symposium! 

Iza's work looks at how coralline algae can be used to reconstruct past ocean temperatures in high-latitude environments. The algae she uses grow in annual bands, similar to tree rings, and as they grow, they capture the chemical signals from the seawater around them. Her goal is to test how different isotope ratios, including Mg/Ca and some lithium-based ratios, correlate with ocean temperatures; to find out which one is the most accurate thermometer. Since the Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth, these "living fossils" can tell us how much our oceans have changed even before humans started keeping track.