Dr. Margo Lillie is retiring after a remarkable 34 years as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Research Associate in the Zoology Department. Margo originally came to UBC in 1986 to work as a PDF in John Gosline’s biomechanics lab. Prior to that, Margo earned BSc and MSc degrees in physiology at Queen’s University, and a PhD in biophysics at the University of Western Ontario, where she started a long-term research program on the mechanical properties of arterial elastin.
In her career Margo carried out numerous ground-breaking studies on the biophysics of the arterial system in mammals and came to be one of the world’s leading authorities on elastomeric proteins. Her work with John Gosline investigated the molecular mechanism of elasticity in elastin, predicted durability and fatigue lifetime of arteries, and delved into how the complex three-dimensional organization of elastin fibres in the artery wall influences its mechanical response to dynamic pressures.
When John Gosline retired in 2008, Bob Shadwick was fortunate to recruit Margo with the promise that whale arterial systems would also be fun to work on, and since 2009 she has been fully focussed on whale biomechanics based on anatomy, tissue mechanics and mathematical modelling. Her work has yielded several major papers on a range of new findings in large baleen whales. These include arterial designs to protect against adverse pressure gradients during diving, anatomical mechanisms to control thoracic and cranial pressures resulting from swimming and diving, and elucidating the folding mechanism that underlies the high extensibility of some facial nerves.
Throughout her career Margo’s keen analytical mind and her rigorous scientific approach have been hallmarks of her research. She loves a challenging problem and devising methods to investigate it. She has guided many graduate and undergraduate research trainees by providing them with both technical and philosophical aspects of doing science, and teaching them how to think. But coupled with Margo’s serious approach has always been a sense that scientific discovery should be fun. And fun it has been!
Although Margo is now settling into a new house on Saltspring island, she will continue her whale research, mostly when the weather is too bad to go kayaking. Happy days, Margo!
Reconstructed micro-CT image of a nerve from the ventral groove blubber of a fin whale. Research and image by Margo Lillie