Dr. Tochi Panesar - Researcher
Dr. Tochi Panesar says Royal Roads is like an island paradise. That`s one of many reasons he feels perfectly positioned to conduct his groundbreaking research, no pun intended, since his work literally means breaking ground and analyzing forest soils.
Born in Uganda, Panesar earned a Bachelor of Science in Biology in the United Kingdom at the University of London. His research began by looking at vector-borne infections in Ugandans. This work helped him to earn a Master`s in Parasitology from Tulane University in New Orleans. It also triggered his interest in studying helminths, which includes his current specialty of nematodes.
Like so many Canadians, a bad political climate in Uganda brought him to Canada in 1975. He earned his PhD in Nematology at McGill University in Montreal. That doctoral work strengthened his interest in the morphology, taxonomy, general biology and ecology of zoo-parasitic, phyto-parasitic and free-living nematodes.
More recently Panesar has been studying forestry impacts on pathogenicity and survival strategies in pinewood nematodes. He has also been part of a project looking into the use of free-living nematodes as bio-indicators of changes in soil ecology resulting from man-made disturbances like clearcuts. For more information on this research you can read Subterranean impacts probed by RRU scientists in the September issue of InRoads.
The research was carried out at the Pacific Forestry Centre and in the Applied Research Division at Royal Roads University where Panesar is a research associate. He and colleague Dr. Valin Marshall produced the first taxonomy of nematodes for any of the provinces in Canada. Their publication, Monograph of Soil Nematodes from Coastal Douglas-fir Forests in British Columbia (in PDF format) has been recognized internationally as a significant contribution to future studies in biodiversity, sustainability of forest soils and the health of forests.
"At the genus level nematodes are relatively easy to identify," Panesar says. "It`s much more difficult to do so at the species level."
Panesar`s work will be included in a forthcoming overview of the study of nematodes being produced by faculty at Simon Fraser University and McGill University.
"Royal Roads is a unique place with many campus features that make it nice just being here," Panesar says.
