Fisheries and Marine Institute of Memorial University of Newfoundland

Dr. (Ms.) Deepika Dave is a Research Scientist in the CASD since 2012. She is a principal investigator for the delivery of the product and process design, industrial and development services at the Marine Institute’s Marine Bioprocessing Facility. Dr. Dave has over 17 years of increasingly responsible experience in engineering, science, management, research, training and facilitation. Dr. Dave specializes in the areas of marine bioprocessing and bioconversion, blue biotechnology and waste Utilization (including production of high value molecules such as nutraceuticals, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals from marine unutilized resources, both on a small and pilot scale), environmental engineering (including waste characterization, water/wastewater treatment, management and utilization, remediation of contaminated air, water and soil) and energy production and management (including characterization of biomass, size reduction, production of bioethanol and biodiesel).

Dr. Deepika Dave
Telephone: (709) 757-0732
Dr. Deepika Dave’s Research Profile

Dr. Juran Goyali joined the Marine Bioprocessing team at the Centre for Aquaculture and Seafood Development (CASD) as a Postdoctoral Fellow in February 2019. His current research interests focus on the development of processing technology to produce high-end quality products from seafood and its by-products. His research is emphasized to increase the yield, quality, shelf-life and competitiveness of sea cucumber products in the market.

Before joining CASD, Dr. Goyali worked with the plant physiology research group at Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) focused on the effect of abiotic (hypoxic) stresses on the metabolism and physiological development of plants. He completed his Ph.D. in Biology from MUN on the morphological, biochemical and molecular characterization of blueberry plants. His Ph.D. research was underlined on the evaluation of phytochemical content and antioxidant activity in blueberry leaves and fruits at different developmental stages, and identification of genetic and epigenetic variations in the blueberry plants propagated by advance and conventional propagation methods. He also worked as a Research Technician with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada at the St. John’s Research and Development Centre.

Before moving to Canada, Dr. Goyali worked with a leading non-government organization, BRAC-Bangladesh, as a Seed Technologist where he managed and coordinated the project on producing and marketing seed potato. He acquired his Master’s degree in Plant Breeding from Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, India, and Bachelor of Science in Agriculture from Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh.

Wade Murphy joined CASD in 1990 and has been part of the Bioprocessing unit since its inception. As Facility Supervisor he currently manages maintenance and expansion of the laboratory and pilot plant, and leads the procurement, modification and installation of processing equipment.
Throughout his career, Wade has gained expert knowledge of seafood processing technologies, operating seafood processing operations and work on processing efficiencies and familiarity with all aspects of the seafood processing industry and the companies operating the facilities. He holds a Diploma in Food Technology from the Marine Institute.
His growing interest in by-product utilization for the fin fish and shellfish industry initiated various applied research projects on composting, ensilaging, fish meal processing and the utilization of snow crab and shrimp shell which have ultimately laid the ground work for the establishment of the Marine Bioprocessing facility and its ability to perform research focused on marine by-products.
In his current position as Facility Supervisor, he plays an integral role in the development and implementation of project activity, especially the scale-up initiatives. He works with the marine bioprocessing research group to identify, procure and install processing equipment for processes being developed; performs pilot-scale production runs and ensures that the facility meets current Occupational Health and Safety guidelines.

Julia Pohling joined the CASD Bioprocessing team as Marine Biotechnologist in 2012. Her work focuses on industrial process optimization, pilot-scale process design, and research on waste management and by-product utilization.

Ms. Pohling holds a Bachelor and Master of Science degree in Biotechnology with a focus on bio-process engineering, in particular downstream processing, protein purification and bioreactor modeling. Her BSc thesis work was on the development of a cell-culture based Influenza split vaccine (Chiron Vaccines, Germany) while the MSc thesis was titled “Characterization of interferon expression patterns in Hepatitis B infection” (Health Sciences, Memorial University, St. John’s).

Following her graduation, Ms. Pohling continued worked in the field of basic immunological research (HIV) at before beginning to work for Abbott Diagnostics (Wiesbaden, Germany) in the position of Head Product Specialist in a team responsible for the manufacturing of diagnostic tests for Hepatitis.

Examples of her work at the Marine Institute are the development of an environmentally friendly chitin extraction process from shrimp shell, the extraction and evaluation of fish oil, characterization and treatment of plant effluent, extraction and analysis of marine pigments and other applied and analytical research projects into the development of marine by-products.

Sheila Trenholm joined the Bioprocessing group as Laboratory Technologist in 2013. She is responsible for the day-to-day management of the research laboratory and for performing research activities and analytical services in the fields of by-products utilization, seafood product development and quality monitoring.

Ms Trenholm holds a BSc degree in Biology from Memorial University and an Advanced Diploma in Food Safety from the Marine Institute of MUN.

Prior to joining the Marine Institute, she worked as an environmental assessment consultant, a quality assessment technician with an ice cream production plant, a specialized diet consultant and counselor and as a project specialist in the food and beverage division of a chemical supply company. As Technician in the Biochemistry Department of Memorial University of Newfoundland’s Food Science Division, she worked on the research, development and testing of marine food products.

Her work at CASD has included projects on the characterization of marine oils, analysis of biodiesel, chitin/chitosan, wastewater and the quality assessment of seafood.