Lawrence Man

WHERE I'M FROM

Born in Hong Kong and raised in Canada.

BEFORE VS

I received my BSc in Cellular, Molecular, and Microbial Biology at the University of Calgary. During my degree, I worked at optometry clinics as an optometric assistant, and studied myopia models at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute (HBI). At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, I did an internship at a wastewater-based epidemiology lab that tracked and analyzed SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater to understand how COVID-19 was spreading in the community. I then did my honors thesis at the HBI where I studied the developmental gene expression of neuropsins in the frog retina.

WHY I’M HERE

I developed an interest in vision because I started wearing ortho-k lenses since I was young and found the eye to be fascinating. Over the duration of my undergraduate degree, I realized that I enjoyed doing eye research and learning more about the retina.

MY RESEARCH

I would like to study the areas of molecular biology and physiology in the diseased retina in order to approach ophthalmic treatments in better ways.

MY GOALS

In the future, I hope to investigate the causes and mechanisms of retinal degeneration, myopia, and other vision disorders for the advancement of ocular health as a vision science researcher.

MY HOBBIES

I enjoy playing squash, dining out, traveling, scuba diving, and riding motorcycles.

PUBLICATIONS

Bertolesi, G.E., Debnath, N., Malik, H.R., Man, L., & McFarlane, S. (2022). Type II Opsins in the Eye, the Pineal Complex and the Skin of Xenopus laevis: Using Changes in Skin Pigmentation as a Readout of Visual and Circadian Activity. Frontiers in neuroanatomy, 15, 784478.

Acosta, N., Bautista, M.A., Waddell, B.J., McCalder, J., Beaudet, A.B., Man, L., Pradhan, P., Sedaghat, N., Papparis, C., Bacanu, A., Hollman, J, Krusina, A., Southern, D., Williamson, T., Li, C., Bhatnagar, S., Murphy, S., Chen, J., Kuzma, D., Meddings, J., Hu, J., Cabaj, J.L., Conly, J.M., Ruecker, N.J., Achari, G., Ryan, J.M., Frankowski, K., Hubert, C.R.J, Parkins, M.D. (2022). Longitudinal SARS-CoV-2 RNA wastewater monitoring across a range of scales correlates with total and regional COVID-19 burden in a well-defined urban population. Water Research, 220, 118611.

Acosta, N., Bautista, M.A., Hollman, J., McCalder, J., Beaudet, A.B., Man, L., Waddell, B.J., Chen, J., Li, C., Kuzma, D., Bhatnagar, S., Leal, J., Meddings, J., Hu, J., Cabaj, J.L., Ruecker, N.J., Naugler, C., Pillai, D.R., Achari, G., Ryan, M.C., Conly, J.M., Frankowski, K., Hubert, C.R.J, Parkins, M.D. (2021). A Multicenter Study Investigating SARS-CoV-2 in Tertiary-Care Hospital Wastewater. Viral burden correlates with increasing hospitalized cases as well as hospital-associated transmissions and outbreaks. Water Research, 201, 117369.