STEMcast

Join us on this episode of STEMCast as we explore topics ranging from NeuroAI to student entrepreneurship with Yohaï-Eliel Berreby, a current Ph.D. student at McGill University's School of Biomedical Sciences. He is a CAMBAM and Childress Fellow and has received many prestigious awards alongside his doctoral studies in one of McGill's most renowned programs. Besides pursuing NeuroAI research, he has also won multiple high-profile hackathons (e.g., ReadyTraderGo Algorithmic Market Making Competition, Meta's AI Safety Hackathon, etc.) and is the acting CEO of ShapeShifters, an IT consulting firm based in Paris. How has he managed to balance so many commitments? What advice would he give to students? Hear it all on this episode of STEMCast.

In this episode of STEMCast, we will be diving into the world of artificial intelligence with Professor Aaron Courville, with topics spanning from Game Theory to Explainable AI. Prof. Courville is from the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research at Université de Montréal. He is one of the founding members of Mila and a Canada CIFAIR AI Chair.Alongside Ian Goodfellow and Yoshua Bengio, he co-wrote the seminal textbook on deep learning: aptly named Deep Learning. His current research focuses on developing deep learning models and methods, with a particular interest in reinforcement learning, deep generative models, and multimodal ML in the domains of language and vision.

In this episode, we dive into the wonders of the depths of Earth's oceans and the reaches of empty space to explore the role that microorganisms play in life everywhere with Dr. Nagissa Mahmoudi, a specialist in Geomicrobiology and Assistant Professor at McGill in the School of Environment and at Trottier Space Institute. Dr. Mahmoudi received her bachelor of science in integrative biology at the University of Toronto and her PhD in Environmental Geochemistry at McMaster University and has since had an incredibly successful career in geomicrobiology academia, with over a decade of attention-grabbing publications under her belt.

In this episode of STEMcast, we explore Dr. Shuaiqi Guo's academic history as well as his research in adhesive surface chemistry and its relation to antimicrobial resistance. Dr. Guo is an assistant professor in the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology at McGill University. He completed his education worldwide, starting at the undergraduate level at Mount Allison University, continuing into his Ph.D. at Queen's University, and finally in postdoctoral fellowship at Eindhoven University of Technology and Yale University. His current research is focused on combatting antimicrobial resistance through alternative methods focused on bacterial adhesion, which has particular promise in its ability to circumvent the speed of bacterial evolution by preventing binding in the first place.

This episode of STEMcast focuses on Doctor Shirin Abbasinejad Enger and her research in oncology and medical physics. Dr. Enger is an associate professor in the Department of Oncology at the Jewish General Hospital section of McGill Medicine. Her work focuses in interdisciplinary development and testing of cancer therapies, including brachytherapy and much more. Dr. Enger received her PhD from Uppsala University, and uses her expertise to lead students across multiple branches for cancer research.

In this special collaborative episode of STEMCast (McGill iGEM x UBC-Okanagan iGEM), we speak with Dr. Isaac Li, Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of British Columbia Okanagan. Dr. Li's lab builds DNA-based molecular tools to study mechanobiology through single-molecule and quantitative imaging. These tools are used to better understand the cell-cell interactions involved in diseases such as cancer. Dr. Li was named UBCO Faculty Researcher of the Year in 2023. He also acts as the Primary Investigator for the UBC-Okanagan iGEM Team. Join us for this special episode featuring UBC-Okanagan iGEM's Human Practices Lead, Oluwatinufemi (Tinu) Tope-Awofeko.

Dr. Eugene Park is a specialist in the pathophysiology of traumatic brain injury and brain injury therapeutics to improve outcomes. Dr. Park graduated with a master's from the department of Physiology at UofT and a Ph.D. from the Institute of Medical Science at UofT as well. Dr. Park is currently working as a Senior Research Associate at Unity Health Toronto.

Dr. Drew Endy is a synthetic biologist and professor in the Department of Bioengineering at Stanford University. He helped start new undergraduate majors in bioengineering at both MIT and Stanford. Twenty years ago Drew also helped launch the iGEM competition. As a group of students passionate about building with biology, it's a privilege to be able to speak with Dr. Endy.

In this mini-episode of STEMcast, we speak with Dr. Adalsteinn Brown. Dr. Brown is the Dean of Dalla Lana, the school of public health at the University of Toronto. He obtained his A.B. from Harvard and PhD at Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He has been the co-chair of COVID-19 Advisory Board in Ontario and has held many senior leadership roles in health policy. His research interests include health policy, public health emergency preparedness, outcome assessment in healthcare, and equity in healthcare.

Dr. Sandra Hofmann is an Associate Professor in Bioengineering Bone at the Orthopaedic Biomechanics research group at Eindhoven University of Technology. Dr. Hoffmann obtained her masters in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Basel, Switzerland in 2002, then achieved her Ph.D. with distinctions at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 2007, studying "Silk fibroin as a biomaterial for drug delivery and tissue engineering". Dr. Hofmann specializes in creating a human cell-based, functional, 3D in vitro model of bone which allows for studying interactions between various environmental factors and their effects on the cells. Additionally, these models can be used for studying the interactions between various cell types with bone and also differences between cells from various donors.

On this episode of STEMcast, we’d like to introduce to you Dr. Michael Hendricks. Dr. Hendricks is currently a Canada Research Chair in Neurobiology and Behaviour. He did his BSc at Bowdoin, his PhD at NUS, and postdoc research at Harvard. On top of being a McGill prof, he is the Hendricks Lab at McGill, where he studies the behaviour of C. Elegans roundworms. Dr. Hendricks has published papers not just on worm neuroscience but also on the gender gap in research funding. His lab website is home to a pretty awesome picture of a cowboy water bear on a worm.

On this episode the STEMcast special release, we explore plant biology with Dr. Jaswinder Singh. Dr. Jaswinder Singh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Plant Science at McGill, specializing in genomics, molecular breeding, and biotechnology. He earned his PhD from the University of Sydney and completed postdoctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His research involves epigenetic silencing reversal, novel barley genes linked to Pre-Harvest Sprouting, and cysteine- rich proteins, redox regulation and transcription factors involved in different plant phase transitions. Dr. Singh also directs the NSERC-CREATE program on Genome Editing and has received numerous accolades for his contributions to plant biology.

Dr. Schwarcz is the head of the Office of Science and Society at McGill, which debunks scientific misinformation and provides scientific education to the general public. He also teaches over 3000 students at McGill and is the host of the Dr. Joe Show-a chemistry podcast that has been running for 40+ years-which addresses all kinds of scientific myths and everyday scientific phenomena. In this episode, he addresses the impact of his educational initiatives, the use of statistics, COVID misinformation, and more with McGill iGEM.