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Latest & greatest | News – continued
new graduate students Linda Liu (MSc student) and Yao
Shen (PhD student); and Melanie Gloyd came back from
her maternity leave. She is still trying to fix some of the
things that we “messed up” during her absence (oops...).
This year, we also had two high school students – Wah
Ku Pah and Phoung Le – that amazed us with their talent
and good attitude. With these young trainees around,
one of Meg’s many hidden talents came to light; she is
a gifted mentor! Meg is also a passionate speaker who
received the Karl Freeman Award for her seminar to the
Department. Ahmad Almawi gave well-received oral
presentations at the BHT Crystallography Meeting and
the Buffalo DNA Replication and Repair Symposium.
Ahmad Almawi and Mary Ortiz Castro received awards
at the FHS Research Plenary for their oral and poster
presentations. Mary was best in her category! Monica
and Jeremy had back-to-back papers in Nucleic Acids
Research at the end of the year, and Jeremy’s work was
highlighted on the cover. The laboratory also published
a number of collaborative papers this year, it has been
a privilege to contribute to so many different stories.
Though Alba stayed put during the fall term, she was
on a whirlwind tour this spring. She gave presentations
at the Dynamic DNA Structures in Damage Responses
and Cancer Meeting (Cancun), the Biophysical Society
of Canada General Meeting (Winnipeg), the Canadian
Society for Microbiology Meeting (Toronto) and the DNA
Replication and Genome Maintenance Meeting (Trieste,
Italy). Alba was promoted to full professor this year and
was the proud recipient of this year’s YWCA Women of
Distinction Award in the category of Science, Technology
and Trades. This award was a great recognition for her
efforts at empowering young female scientists. On the
fun side, we also worked hard on our Halloween group
costume this year and, while we did not win, we had a
lot of fun making our costumes.
MacNeil Lab
Year one in the MacNeil lab has been exciting. We’ve
been setting up the lab, and thanks to the Canada
Foundation for Innovation (CFI), buying some much
needed equipment. The MacNeil lab received funding for
their research through an NSERC Discovery grant and an
NSERC Discovery accelerator supplement.
Congratulations to our first graduate student, Blake
White on receiving a Farncombe Family graduate
scholarship. Our undergrads Andrea Tench, Treden
(Trae) Simon, Michelle Lohbihler, Sophia Duong and
Dennis Ngo completed some great thesis projects this
year. Trae is starting his M.Sc. in Dr. Fred Dick’s lab at
the University of Western Ontario in September, as well,
Andrea Tench received a BHSc (McMaster) summer
research scholarship to work in the lab and is staying on
for a 4th year thesis in the fall. We look forward to the
start of our second M.Sc. student, Sabih Rashid, as well a
whole new crop of undergraduates in September.
We hosted many visitors this year, including Federal
Science Minister Kirsty Duncan and MP Filomena Tassi,
who both toured the lab, met with trainees, and learned
about our research. The Minister’s visit was featured
in the Hamilton Spectator and Dr. Lesley MacNeil was
interviewed on CHCH news. Doing our part for science
outreach, we hosted students from two primary school
groups – getting them excited about mutant worms and
fundamental science.
McArthur Lab
It has been a good first full year for the McArthur Lab
since joining McMaster’s Department of Biochemistry
& Biomedical Sciences and this success is in large
part due to the many undergraduates who joined the
lab. Justin Jia (Biochem Co-Op), Tariq Elsayegh (Royal
College of Surgeons in Ireland), and Daim Sardar (iSci)
got the ball rolling with setting up a new curation
paradigm for the Comprehensive Antibiotic Resistance
Database (CARD; arpcard.mcmaster.ca), while later
Amos Raphenya (Software Developer) and Pearl Guo
(UWaterloo CompSci Co-Op) joined Justin to completely
re-design CARD’s data schema, web interface, and
