Trainee Symposium
Biophysical Society of Canada (BSC) Trainee Symposium
The BSC Trainee Symposium is a student-led initiative organized in association with the 7th Annual Meeting of the BSC. The goal of the symposium is to provide opportunities for trainees to network with each other and with established researchers in academia, industry, government and communications. Trainees will also have the opportunity to present their work through oral presentations. The Keynote Speakers are profiled below:
The BSC Trainee Symposium will be held at the University of Ottawa on May 24th, 2022. The symposium is being organized by both the BSC Trainee Executive and local trainees from the University of Ottawa. The tentative program for the symposium is as follows (details will be posted as soon as they are available):
1) An Introductory Keynote Lecture
2) Career Session (4 talks, each is 20-25 min followed by a 15-minute panel discussion)
3) Coffee Break & Networking
4) Trainee Oral Presentations. (8 selected trainees, each with a 10 min presentation followed by a 5 min Q&A.
BSC Trainee Executive (https://biophysicalsociety.ca/trainee-executive/):
Sarika Kumari (President, MUN), Vishal Pandya Rameshkumar (Vice-President, MUN), Morgan Robinson (Waterloo), Benjamin Baylis (Guelph), Tam Pham (Dalhousie), Alaa Al-Shaer (Simon Fraser), Alex Brown (Dalhousie), MacAulay Harvey (Saint Mary's), Jeff Simmons (Dalhousie), Kathleen Vergunst (Dalhousie), Emily Prowse (McGill), Samira Rasouli Koohi (Alberta), Alyssa Oke (Simon Fraser).
Local uOttawa organizing committee:
Anna Ananchenko (BMI, Medicine), Rebecca Dean (CBS, Science), Toka Hussein (BMI, Medicine), Megan Miaro (CBS, Science), Deepansh Mody (BMI, Medicine), Mariam Taktek (CBS, Science).
For more information, please do not hesitate to reach out to Sarika Kumari (skumari@mun.ca) or Toka Hussein (thuss090@uottawa.ca).
BSC Trainee Symposium Speakers
Trushar Patel
University of Lethbridge
Dr. Patel started his career as an independent researcher at the University of Lethbridge in 2016. He uses interdisciplinary approaches to study the interaction of viral nucleic acids with host proteins - an interaction at the heart of viral infections. Dr. Patel holds a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in RNA and Protein Biophysics. His work was supported by postdoctoral fellowships from the Manitoba Institute of Child Health (2008) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (2010). He also received the Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellowship (2013) from the European Union. He has been very active in training the next generation of researchers, as well as with scientific and science-policy-related conference organizing activities.
Kyle Briggs
Northern Nanopore Instruments Inc
Dr. Briggs is a biophysicist-turned-entrepreneur and Vanier scholar who is leading a start-up company based on solid-state nanopore fabrication technology invented at the University of Ottawa. Kyle has 10 years of experience working with solid-state nanopores both academically and industrially and is the author of related 20 peer-reviewed publications and 4 patents.
Shawn McGuirk
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
Dr. McGuirk is a Deputy Director at the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and an alumnus of both the Mitacs Canadian Science Policy Fellowship and the Government of Canada Recruitment of Policy Leaders programs. Previously, his Ph.D. research at the Goodman Cancer Research Institute of McGill University centered on the role of cellular metabolism in cancer progression. He is also a longstanding member of the boards of directors of Science & Policy Exchange, a student-led non-profit organization that builds capacity for the next generation in science policy, and of Acfas, a non-profit organization that promotes research, innovation, and scientific culture in the francophone community.
Naman Shah
Paraza Pharma Inc.
Dr. Shah is a senior scientist at Paraza Pharma, Inc., an innovative collaborative research organization passionately committed to helping you advance your Drug Discovery Programs. Whether our chemists and biologists are working as fully integrated members of a client’s drug discovery team or providing expertise to solve specific problems, our world-class Drug Discovery Experts are helping clients to reach milestones from lead identification through lead optimization and development candidate selection. The strength and consistency of our discovery team have led to the development and support of programs with a range of collaborators from major pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies as well as non-profit organizations.
Trainee Travel Awards
Travel Awards to the BSC Annual Meeting
The Biophysical Society of Canada will provide merit-based travel support for students (both undergraduate and graduate) and post-doctoral fellows to attend the 2022 annual meeting of the Biophysical Society of Canada in Ottawa. To be eligible to apply, the student or post-doctoral fellow AND their supervisor must be members of the Biophysical Society of Canada at the time of the application. The submission deadline is May 1, 2022. For more information and to apply, please visit the Awards Page of the Biophysical Society of Canada
Travel Awards to the IUPAB Focused Meeting The Biophysics of Ligand-Gated Ion Channels: from structures to drug design
Limited funds are available to support the participation of trainees in the IUPAB Focused Meeting. Trainees must be from disadvantaged regions of the world or from disadvantaged communities in Canada. Support can be for either travel to Ottawa (minimum 500 CAD) to participate in the meeting in person or to support participation online ((registration fees will be covered). The travel support will be given out on a competitive basis.
To apply for IUPAB support, please send your application to IUPAB2022@uottawa.ca. The deadline for applications is May 1, 2022. The application must consist of a single pdf, maximum 5 pages with the following information: 1) your name, position, affiliation and research area, along with a single paragraph outlining your rational for attending the meeting (total 1 page), 2) a 2 page max CV, and 3) a 1 page support letter from your supervisor/mentor. The application must have 1 inch (2.5 cm) margins and must be in 12 point font.
We encourage trainees who identify as Indigenous Peoples or persons with disabilities to apply for travel support. Please indicate in your application if you identify as one of these groups.
