Olivia Boven – Ecological & Conservation Genomics Lab

Olivia Boven
Research Technician
Email: oboven@student.ubc.ca

Education

2025 Master of Science, Biology, University of British Columbia (Okanagan)
2023 Bachelor of Science, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology with minor in Indigenous studies, University of British Columbia (Okanagan)

Research Interests

The use of genetic tools to inform conservation, particularly in species for which methods such as mark-recapture are impractical
Fisheries (marine and freshwater)
Research centered on furthering Indigenous goals

Projects

Assessing stock proportions and fitness of sockeye-kokanee hybrids within Okanagan Lake and Skaha Lake, BC

Lab News

July 2026
Mike was appointed as an inaugural UBCO Impact Research Chair.

June 2026
Congratulations to Carrie Jessop for successfully defending her MSc thesis “Reconstructing the mating system of Santa Cruz Galapagos giant tortoises with implications for the conservation of a critically endangered species”. Best wishes to Carrie as she pursues her PhD at the University of Wisconsin in the fall.

May 2026
A new paper published in Conservation Genetics employs population genomics to evaluate the feasibility of island eradication of an invasive deer to support ecosystem restoration.

April 2026
Welcome back to Olivia Boven, now as a Wildlife Genetics Research Assistant in the ECGL. Congratulations to Dr. Danielle Schmidt, recipient of a Mitacs Accelerate Postdoctoral Fellowship to pursue research in the ECGL to support the development of a rapid eDNA detection tool to improve invasive mussel biosecurity in British Columbia.

March 2026
A new paper published in Journal of Heredity and featured on the cover investigates the morphological, behavioural and fitness outcomes of sockeye x kokanee salmon hybridization, providing important insights into life history evolution and actionable information for guiding reintroduction programs of anadromous stocks to their former range extents.

January 2026
Mike has been elected to the American Genetics Association Council, an organization that dates back to 1903 and that has disseminated achievements in genetics through the Journal of Heredity for over 100 years. Welcome to Sofía Esquenazi, a visiting PhD student from Argentina who will be pursuing a population genomic study of lowland tapirs with funding support from the Government of Canada’s Emerging Leaders in the Americas Program and the Mitacs Globalink Research Internship program.

December 2025
Congratulations to PhD candidate Anna Jacquemart for being awarded the Exeter-UBCO Sustainability and Resilience Partnership – Visiting Research Student Fellowship. Anna was also recognized by the I.K. Barber Faculty of Science for her recent publication in Evolutionary Applications .

October 2025
Welcome to Molly Garrett and Danielle Schmidt, new postdoctoral researchers in the ECGL. A new paper published in Molecular Ecology investigates patterns of climate-mediated adaptive genetic variation and predicts the degree of genomic offset under multiple climate change scenarios for a sentinel alpine mammal.