eButterfly Team

Core Team

Maxim Larrivée, PhD
Insectarium Montréal
Founder & Director of eButterfly

Max is the director of the Insectarium Montréal. His research explores how global change impacts the distribution of butterflies. He has strong interests in biodiversity information management and the macroecology of insects.

Jeremy Kerr, PhD
University of Ottawa
Founder of eButterfly and Principal Investigator

Jeremy is a Professor of Biology at the University of Ottawa. His intellectual contributions and research support were instrumental to the original development of eButterfly, which is part of his Canada Global Change Transect (CGCT) project. He is Vice President (and President-elect) of the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution, holds the University Research Chair in Macroecology and Conservation, and is both a Science Leadership Fellow and an inaugural fellow of the Global Young Academy.

Kent McFarland, MS
Vermont Center for Ecostudies – Vermont Atlas of Life
Co-director of eButterfly

Kent is a senior conservation biologist at the Vermont Center for Ecostudies in Norwich, Vermont. His research focuses on bird and butterfly ecology and conservation. He has wide-ranging experiences and interests in community science, communications and conservation photography.

Xinbao Zhang
Co-founder of eButterfly and Head Software Developer

Xinbao is a computer scientist interested in bioinformatics, database creation and community science. He translates our eButterfly ideas and wants into reality. He’s nothing short of a wizard. When not busy coding, we hope he practices swinging a net.

Michael Bunsen
Software and DevOps Engineer

Michael is a computer scientist with far-ranging interests in the intersection of biology and computer science. On any given day, he could be working on a giant taxonomy list, spinning up a new server, implementing a computer vision model, or perhaps teasing us with his latest butterfly photo. He has been the lead developer in creating the eButterfly global taxonomy.

Rodrigo Solis, DVM, PhD
eButterfly Human Network and Data Coordinator

Rodrigo is a Resource and Environmental Management PhD at Simon Fraser University, Canada. His main research interest lies within the social-ecological interphase of the Monarch Butterfly conservation. He has worked with the Monarch for 8 years and collaborated with several organizations such as WWF-Mexico. He Joined the eButterfly team in 2019 as the Human Network and Data Coordinator after doing a 6-month internship at the Montreal Insectarium.

Regional Project Leads

Juliana Saenz Villada
eButterfly Ambassador in Colombia

An empirical lepidopterist researcher since the age of 8, she specializes in the identification of species in Colombia, as well as the study of butterfly life cycles, their host plants, and nectar plants. Our eButterfly ambassador in South America, where she carries out citizen science activities, training research groups and butterfly enthusiasts. Additionally, she contributes to social media management and actively participates in butterfly observation.

Kevin Gauthier
eButterfly Ambassador in Panama

Kevin is an entomologist dedicated to advancing long-term monitoring of Lepidoptera and the innovative research it enables. Passionate about multidisciplinary advocacy for insects, he aims to shift social attitudes toward a healthier coexistence with these essential members of our ecosystems. His work integrates entrepreneurship, project management, and biodiversity science to drive eButterfly’s mission of understanding and conserving butterfly diversity.

Co-Ops and Interns

Deborah Shen

University of Waterloo Coop

Deborah is a Computing and Financial Management student at the University of Waterloo and worked as a Mobile and Web Developer for eButterfly from January 2024 to April 2024. Most of her co-op term was focused on learning mobile app development, where she fixed, added, and tested features of the eButterfly mobile app for its release. The remainder of her time was spent completing updates for the eButterfly website. She enjoyed working with a team that was so passionate about their work and hopes to continue developing her professional skills while finding the same enthusiasm in her future roles. Deborah continues to collaborate with the eButterfly team as a part-time developer.

Mairah Hashmi

University of Waterloo Coop

Shivangi Garg

University of Waterloo Coop

Shivangi is a Computer Engineering student at the University of Waterloo. She was the first co-op student to join the team and has navigated through front-end, back-end, and mobile app development during her multiple co-op terms with us. Collaborating with an incredible team, she cherished the diverse challenges that came her way. What set eButterfly apart for her was not just the technical exposure but the gratification of seeing her contributions utilized in production.

Vivek Alamuri

University of Waterloo Coop

Vivek is a Computer Engineering student at the University of Waterloo. He worked as a Software Developer with us for his first co-op from Jan 2021 to April 2021, contributing to the migration from Angular to React, and developing the Projects feature. He loved the team’s energy and enthusiasm for butterflying and taking this project to a greater reach! In the future, Vivek plans to work in AI, on the frontline of innovative research.

Kun Zhu

University of Waterloo Coop

Richard Zhang

University of Waterloo Coop

Teddy Fong

University of Waterloo Coop

Teddy is a biochemistry student studying at the University of Waterloo, particularly interested in fungi, their properties and their relationships with other species. Part of the eButterfly team from January 4^th to April 22^nd, 2022, he mainly helped as a web developer and with website QA. He hopes he’ll catch up on his schoolwork one day and can go butterflying like he’s been saying he would.

Amy Hu

University of Waterloo Coop

Amy is a Computer Engineering student from the University of Waterloo. She worked as a Web Developer co-op student from May 2022 to August 2022 during her first co-op. She has been working on both the E-Butterfly admin panel and the E-butterfly web app.

Adam Courchense

University of Waterloo Coop

Adam spent two terms with us during the summer of 2022 and 2023 as Biomedical Engineering undergraduate. He contributed to the release of EB6 and was instrumental in getting our mobile application up and running! Adam aims to one day combine his programming experience and the concepts he’s learned throughout his undergrad to create impactful solutions to biomedical problem spaces.

Mark Ma

University of Waterloo Coop

Mark is a Computer Science student from the University of Waterloo. He enjoys stories, games, music, and software development. He joined eButterfly as a web developer from May 8th, 2023, to Aug, 25th, 2023. He worked on eButterfly’s web app, admin panel, and web server. He is still unsure of where to go, but the experience has taught him a lot and renewed his interest in web development. He plans on applying these skills to his future projects and work.

Anirudh Goel

University of Waterloo Coop

Anirudh Goel, a Computer Science student at the University of Waterloo, worked as a Mobile and Web developer during his tenure at eButterfly from May to August 2023. Combining his technological skills with a newfound love for nature, he was able to contribute to multiple projects such as eButterfly’s webpage, admin panel, and mobile application. Anirudh was also inspired by the vibrant company culture and collaborative environment at eButterfly, and he is determined to infuse that same spirit into his future endeavours.

Connor Kendall

University of Waterloo WE Accelerate and Coop

Connor Kendall is a Biomedical Engineering student at the University of Waterloo. He joined the eB team in 2022 via the WeAccelerate program to assist with developing eBLabs. He worked on the front-end and created the UI of the home and resource page! Connor is interested in the innovation and development of bio-technologies, like eButterfly, that help improve our world.

Mehdi Haned

University of Waterloo WE Accelerate

Mehdi worked with eButterfly between  June 27th, 2022 and July 29th,  2022BIO. He is a mathematics student from the University of Waterloo that loves the outdoors. Joined EB as a coop student for the opportunity to learn new development skills and see how such projects are done. He worked on helping with building the website’s backend API (its ability to call and interact with information from the database)

Sitansh Mehta

University of Waterloo WE Accelerate

I was fortunate to be allowed to work with eButterfly through the University of Waterloo’s WE Accelerate program. I had a great experience working on the frontend and backend of the eButterfly Labs’ admin and app projects with a supportive group of developers. The scale of my learning and growth from eButterfly has been unexpected and has sparked an interest in web development. I plan on building the skills I’ve picked up extending my learning by working on my projects, and hopefully returning to eButterfly again in the future! 

Anish Khurana

University of Waterloo WE Accelerate

Anish Khurana is a Software Engineering student at the University of Waterloo and joined the eButterfly team through the WE Accelerate program in 2022. He has worked on the front end and backend of the eButterfly Labs’ admin panel through the creation of the users’ page. This experience has sparked Anish’s interest for web development and coupled with his already fluent backend skills, his goal is to go into full stack development. Working on this project has given Anish a better appreciation of the outdoors.

Amanda Yuan

University of Waterloo WE Accelerate

Vetting experts for TEA

Kirstyn Eckhardt

University of Manitoba

I’m a graduate student in Entomology at the University of Manitoba, studying the growth and development of an endangered prairie butterfly. You can find me outdoors with my camera, chasing butterflies in my free time.

Alexandra Gregg

Simon Fraser University

Alexandra Gregg is an undergraduate student at Simon Fraser University studying the ecology and conservation of Canadian butterfly species. She is currently interested in specialist-generalist relationships, and her favourite butterfly is the Plebejus icarioides.