Michelle is a fish welfare researcher, with a MSc from the University of New Brunswick and, as of early 2022, a PhD from the University of Guelph (supervised by Dr. Georgia Mason). During her early training as a salmon ecologist, she became interested in how profoundly an animal’s environment could influence its health and welfare, especially in captive settings like farms and hatcheries. Now she investigates the effects of preferred environments on the behaviour, welfare, cognitive abilities of widely-used laboratory zebrafish, with interest in many other captive fish species.