The C-Paleo laboratory and its various subsidized research programs are under the responsibility of Geography Department professor Michelle Garneau, a nationally and internationally recognized expert on carbon and wetlands. She is a member of the Geotop Centre, the Centre d'études nordiques (CEN) and the Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire en limnologie (GRIL-UQAM).

Her expertise and research interests revolve around the dynamics of climate change and, more specifically, understanding the response of ecosystems to natural (Holocene scale) or anthropogenic (induced by the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere) climate change. The use of paleoecological indicators makes it possible to reconstruct windows on the past in an attempt to predict how ecosystems might behave in the future.

Michelle Garneau holds a bachelor's degree in geography and a master's degree in biogeography from Université Laval, as well as a doctorate in plant biology (paleoecology) from the University of Amsterdam.