Graduate Students
Joshua T. Taylor
M.Sc.
Doctoral Student
Bioscience of Health and Disease
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Joshua Taylor, Doctoral Student
Joshua Taylor is a doctoral student in the Andronowski Lab. He is researching opioid use and its implications on the bone remodeling process and potential connections to pathological bone diseases (e.g., osteoporosis). Additionally, he currently serves as the lead teaching assistant for the Undergraduate Medical Education’s Human Anatomy curriculum and for Human Physiology for non-medical students. In 2021, Josh was awarded the Aging Research Centre’s (ARC-NL) Graduate Fellowship and Dean's Fellowship. During his undergraduate degree, he was a research assistant in the Andronowski Lab, curating the Andronowski Skeletal Collection for Histological Research (ASCHR), which is the largest documented skeletal collection of its kind worldwide. Josh continues as the primary curator for the collection.
Josh is currently a member of the Microscopy Society of America (MSA), the Canadian Association for Biological Anthropology (CABA), the National Society for Collegiate Scholars, and the Aging Research Centre - Newfoundland and Labrador.
Shreya Hande
B.Sc.
Master's Student
Bioscience of Health and Disease
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Shreya Hande, Master's Student
Shreya is a graduate student at the Memorial University of Newfoundland in the Bioscience of Health and Disease program. Her thesis work will examine the relationship between bone microstructural changes and associated biochemical parameters (e.g., estrogen, testosterone) as a result of opioid exposure using a rabbit model. Shreya’s undergraduate thesis was based on the microarchitecture of harp seal (Phoca groenlandica) bacula (os penis) visualized using synchrotron and laboratory µCT; this project was supervised by Drs. Janna M. Andronowski and Ted Miller. Shreya has previously worked as an undergraduate student researcher at the Andronowski Lab. Additionally, she has worked as an undergraduate research assistant with Dr. Michiru Hirasawa, gaining experience with immunohistochemical techniques. During her stint as a staff writer and section editor at The Muse, the student-run newspaper at Memorial, Shreya covered scientific and social campus news. Shreya’s volunteering experiences include mentoring incoming international students at the university, as well as organizing and
promoting blood donation events for the Canadian Blood Services.
Rachel Klassen, Doctoral Student
Rachel Klassen
M.Sc.
Doctoral Student
Bioscience of Health and Disease
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Rachel is a doctoral student supervised by Dr. Andronowski studying the effects of opioid medications on bone quantity and quality using a variety of methods to provide a holistic view of what changes occur in bones and how they happen on a cellular level. Furthermore, she is especially interested in the intersection between opioids and sex hormones in both males and females regarding bone health. Rachel completed her MSc at the University of Calgary under Dr. Steven Boyd and Dr. Sarah Manske examining bone remodeling in osteoarthritic bone marrow lesions in human knees. She was awarded the prestigious Young Investigator Award from the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research in 2023 for her work "Crohn's & Bones: Examining Bone Quantity and Quality using High Resolution Peripheral Quantitative Computed Tomography". Rachel is currently a member of the American Society of Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR) as well as the International Society of Bone Morphometry (ISBM).
Fun Fact: Rachel has a hydroxyapatite tattoo, the molecule that makes up the inorganic portion of bone! When not thinking about bones, she enjoys running, knitting, watching F1, and taking care of her many plants.