Profile

Cassandra Haley is a Master of Science student from the Department of Experimental Medicine and the Biomedical Ethics Unit at McGill University under the supervision of Dr. Zawati. She holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Western Ontario, where she pursued an honours specialization in genetics and a major from the School for Advanced Studies in the Arts and Humanities. Cassandra’s undergraduate thesis was on the genotoxicity of microplastics, and through her humanities courses she worked closely with local Indigenous communities to research the Indigenous experience of WWI. Cassandra has also written extensively on the sociological and cultural history of music for an internship through the Faculty of Music.

This interdisciplinary background motivated Cassandra to pursue genetics and bioethics at the graduate level, where she will be researching how Canadian genetic counsellors can respond to the rise of direct-to-consumer genetic tests.

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