Hey there!

I’m Khashiff, a first year PhD. student at Université Laval studying food resources in Inuit communities. I’m a CAUSS diver, a PADI divemaster, a drone pilot and a photographer with an eye towards linking tech with communities and ecosystems to further our understanding of climatic change. Up in Nunavik, I get to do just that in our Sentinel Nord funded project: Tininnimuitait which researches the harvesting potential of country foods like seaweed and mussels.

Born and raised in Mumbai, I only got my first real experiences out in the wild when I took a year off after school to travel around my country. I worked in government schools on the border of India, Pakistan and China with 17000 ft Foundation and worked as a PADI Divemaster for Barefoot SCUBA in the Andaman Islands. I made my way out west to study Chemistry at UChicago but my previous year of scaling peaks and uncovering marine secrets steered me far away from life behind a lab bench. I instead began work with Drs. Cathy Pfister and Tim Wootton: marine ecologists working out of Tatoosh Island, Makah Tribal Nation.

Tatoosh is a special place - an ancient summer harvesting site for the Makah people of the Olympic Peninsula. We got to scrounge around the rocks at low tide measuring the productivity and ecology of algae. I conducted my undergrad thesis research here on the mosaic between kelp assemblages and surfgrass meadows which I got published in Ecology. I followed up this work with a metagenomic analysis of microbial communities living on these insanely productive phototrophs which just got accepted into mSystems.

Pandemic threw some twists into the mix and I found myself getting a Masters in Computer Science at UChicago in 2021. It was here where I learned how to really apply code to applied cotexts like metagenomic analyses and this has given me the skillset to apply this to some of the work I’m conducting right now.

Looking out for a new challenge, I moved up to Quebec City to pursue my PhD. in Oceanography at Université Laval with Drs. Ladd Johnson and Phil Archambault. I get to practice my French, Spanish and Inuktitut these days all while flying drones with the goal of understanding mussels, algae and sculpin as important food resources for the Inuit. Our field work happens up in Kangirsuk and Kangiqsuallujjuaq in Ungava Bay - a Bay largerly unknown to scientists but well known to the Inuit living up there. An interesting sharing of information is going on! Excited to see what comes of it.