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About

Meet Dr. Lynda McCarthy

Much like the environmental movement ignited by Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, Dr. Lynda McCarthy’s work educates, and subsequently empowers the next generation of scientists in the face of today’s environmental issues. She has a special focus in supporting women in the STEM fields, both in her personal life and within her professional tenure.

For the past two decades, Lynda has mentored fourth-year thesis students, graduate personnel, and international student researchers at Toronto Met to assess the potential impact of stressors on aquatic and terrestrial food web organisms.

Her research involves:

  • Aquatic and terrestrial ecotoxicology
  • Great Lakes pollution and remediation
  • Assessing the impact of land-applying municipal biosolids on living organisms
  • Developing an early-warning strategy, or a “Miner’s Canary”, to detect potential threats to water supplies
Lynda McCarthy

Secured over

$2.25 million

in external funding

 

NSERC DGs, NSERC SPG, NCE's SFM, NCE's CWN, OMOE, OMAFRA

 

Lynda McCarthy doing construction work for wetland cells construction

Lynda McCarthy: Wetland Cells construction (CUI), summer 2018

Lynda earned her BSc from Queen’s University and her PhD in Biology from the University of Waterloo. Prior to joining Toronto Met, she worked extensively with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) at the Canada Centre for Inland Waters (CCIW).

From lessons learned there, she founded Toronto Met Urban Water (RUW) and was co-author on the  (PDF file) 2017-2022 Strategic Plan. She was also on the Advisory Committee for the design of RUW research space in the Centre for Urban Innovation (CUI).

Service

Significant Community Involvement

2019 - present

  • Outreach Team Member
  • “rare’s (external link)  goal is to steward its sites and ecosystems intact in perpetuity, for the community to enjoy, forever, in a natural state. It also promotes the lands as a living laboratory for research — including in-house monitoring programs and partnerships with other institutions, citizen scientists, artists and Indigenous Peoples.”

 

2017 - present

“Strengthening coastal aquifer resilience and groundwater use against climate change effects in the Caribbean”: Mehrab Mehrvar (P.I.).

  • Principal collaborator, in conjunction with colleagues from the University of Western Ontario (Dr. Clare Robinson) and from the University of Cartagena (Colombia). M. Mehrvar has brought 17 scholars from Colombia and sent 3 scholars from Canada to Colombia to work on climate change effects on water quality/quantity. The McCarthy Lab has been responsible for providing ecotoxicological mentorship at Toronto Met to several of these visiting Colombian scholars in 2019 and 2020 and has been invited to return to the University of Cartagena to continue further research in Dr. Edgar Quinones’s Environmental Engineering Modelling Group.

Conferences

  1. Sanchez, Y., M. Mehrvar, L. McCarthy, E. Quiñones, L.R. Cheu, J. Romero, Impact of the Sewage Discharge from Hot Springs to Water Sources, Tercero Encuentro Nacional de Estudiantes de Doctorados en Ingeniería (ENEDI 2021), ACOFI 2021, Centro de Convenciones, Cartagena, Colombia, September 16-18, 2021.
  2. Chaparro, Ivan, Yuly Sánchez, Mehrab Mehrvar, Lynda McCarthy, Edgar Quiñones, German Santos and Emiro Robles, Mathematical Modelling Approach for Evaluation of Thermal Water Aquifers: A Case Study of the Paipa Geothermal System, Proceedings of World Geothermal Congress 2020+1, Reykjavik, Iceland, March-October, 2021.
  3. Sanchez, Y., M. Mehrvar, L. McCarthy, E. Quiñones, L.R. Cheu, J. Romero, Scientific discussion of selected viruses including COVID-19 in hot springs, Congreso Internacional de Innovación y Tendencias y Ingeniería (VI CONIITI 2020), Bogotá, Colombia, September 30-October 2, 2020, pp. 1-6, doi: 10.1109/CONIITI51147.2020.9240267.
  4. Sanchez, Y., M. Mehrvar, L. McCarthy, E. Quiñones, L.R. Cheu, J. Romero, An overview of the management of COVID-19 in swimming pools, beaches, and hot springs in Europe, Canada, and Colombia, Segundo Encuentro Nacional de Estudiantes de Doctorados en Ingeniería (ENEDI 2020), ACOFI 2020, Centro de Convenciones, Cartagena, Colombia, September 16-18, 2020. pp 296-304. ISBN: 978-958-680-090-7. https://www.acofi.edu.co/eiei2020/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Memorias-ENEDI-2020.pdf
  5. Sánchez, Yuly, Mehrab Mehrvar, Lynda McCarthy, Edgar Quiñones-Bolaños, Luis Cheu, Jairo Chacón. Adverse effect of direct discharge of hot spring tributaries into rivers on life aquatic ecosystems, The 4th International Conference of Recent Trends in Environmental Science and Engineering (RTESE'21), Niagara Falls, Canada (Virtual Conference), May 17-19, 2021.
  6. Tejeda-Benitez, L., L.H. McCarthy, R. Valle-Molinares, E. Quinones Bolanos, and M. Mehrvar. Climate change and Colombian coastal aquifer susceptibility: assessing impact of salinity and oil spills on select terrestrial and aquatic indicator species. SETAC Latin America 13th Biennial Meeting (Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry). Cartagena, Colombia. September 2019.
  7. Valle-Molinares, R., L.H. McCarthy, L. Tejeda-Benitez, E. Quinones Bolanos, D. Gomez, and M. Mehrvar. Assessing impact of select antibiotics on a terrestrial and aquatic indicator species. SETAC Latin America 13th Biennial Meeting (Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry). Cartagena, Colombia. September 2019.

2018 - 2020

  • Comprehensive Report ( (PDF file) “Gender Equity Group Report: Moving forward with insight from those affected”) submitted to the VP Faculty Affairs and to the membership of the RFA outlining gender-based pay inequity (October 2019). Salient recommendations for a progressive and just “way forward” that will allow Toronto Met to atone for past grievances and provide a path into the future that is fair and evenhanded for all was additionally presented to Provost Benarroch (February 2020).

2015

  • Organizer
  • Produced a plan to advance environmental education (EE) in Ontario schools. The workshop was the first of its kind to bring together a myriad of expertise to examine challenges and attempt to develop sustainable solutions going forward. Invited participants included the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, professors from various Ontario Faculties of Education, teachers, principals, and community-based environmental organizations (conservation authorities, municipal utilities, foundations and NGOs, outdoor education centres, and the Ontario Science Centre).
  • This 2015 Workshop resulted in: 

"Nobody wins, unless everybody wins."

Springsteen, 1985

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