Graduate Awards

• UTM Biology Graduate Student Excellence Award
• Graduate Student Funding Support for Personal Computer/Laptop
• Hottest Student Paper Award
• First Paper Award
• Arabinda Guha Graduate Research Scholarship in Cellular and Molecular Biology

Graduate Student Funding Support for Personal Computer/Laptop

The Department of Biology is pleased to implement a new funding initiative that provides a one-time only gift of $1,000 to Biology PhD students toward purchasing a computer/laptop. To be eligible to receive this funding, you must be a PhD student who is UTM affiliated and is supervised by a Biology faculty member.

Request for funding will be accepted after 6 months into your PhD program and up to 1 year prior to graduation. Requests will be accepted retroactive to the start of your PhD program.

Please submit your requests to Mihai Baetu (mihai.baetu@utoronto.ca) with the following information:

Supervisor Name:
PhD start date:
PhD expected graduation:

Once approved, please submit an expense reimbursement claim with original receipt to Bob Liang, Financial Assistant.

Hottest Student Paper Award

The Hottest Student Paper Award is presented annually in the spring to a UTM Biology Graduate Student who published the “hottest” paper in the preceding calendar year. For example, this June we will announce the winner of the best graduate student paper published in 2014. The criteria for the award are as follows:

1. The paper must be a peer-reviewed published article presenting original work (e.g., new data and results, equations/theories, resources or methods).
2. The student must have taken a leading role in the published work either as first author or co-first author.
3. The majority of the research in the paper must have been conducted while the student was in UTM Biology. Present and former students are both eligible to win the award so long as their paper was published in the preceding year.

The winner, plus two runner-ups, will be selected by a committee that represents the breadth of research interests in the department. The prize will be a cash-prize plus a name on a plaque that will be displayed beside the Hot Student Paper board.

Winner of the 2019 Hottest Student Paper Award

• Connor Fitzpatrick (Assembly and ecological function of the root microbiome across angiosperm plant species)

Runner Up: Jeneni Thiagavel (Auditory opportunity and visual constraint enabled the evolution of echolocation in bats)

Previous Winners

• 2018 Shirin Mollayeva (The involvement of Rhopr-CRF/DH in feeding and reproduction in the blood-gorging insect Rhodnius prolixus)
• 2016 - Christine Chang (Elevated temperature and CO₂ stimulate late-season photosynthesis but impair cold hardening in pine)
• 2015 - Neel Mehta, Arthur Cheng and Lucia Mendoza-Viveros (GRK2 fine-tunes circadian clock speed and entrainment via transcriptional and post-translational control of PERIOD proteins)
• 2014
  • Winner - Charlotte de Araujo (Identification and characterization of a carboxysomal gamma-carbonic anhydrase form the cyanobacterium Nostoc sp. PCC 7120)
  • Runner Up - Martin Turcotte (former PDF, Johnson Lab) and Nash Turley (former PhD candidate, Johnson Lab) (The impact of domestication on resistance to two generalist herbivores across 29 independent domestication events)
• 2013 - Joshua Krupp (Pigment-dispersing factor modulates pheromone production in clock cells that influence mating in Drosophila - Neuron)
• 2012 - Jonathan Schneider (Social structures depend on innate determinants and chemosensory processing in Drosophila - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)
• 2011 - Lucas Parreiras (Cellular effects and epistasis among three determinants of adaptation in experimental populations of Saccharomyces cerevisiae - Eukaryotic Cell)

First Paper Award

The Department of Biology has created the “First Paper Award” to recognize a major accomplishment in a graduate student’s research career, the publication of a first-authored paper.  This award will be given to each student at the time they publish their first lead authored paper based on research completed as a graduate student at UTM in the Department of Biology. Students who previously published a first-authored paper prior to beginning their graduate work at UTM will still be eligible for the award. Students will receive a certificate in recognition of this achievement plus a $50 gift certificate from the department. These awards will also be publicized through the department’s news feed, social media and the Hot Student Paper series.
 
Students or the faculty with whom they’ve worked should provide Mihai Baetu with the information for their first paper upon successful acceptance of that paper for publication. The goal of the award is to recognize the achievements of our graduate students in accomplishing this important milestone in their scientific careers.

Arabinda Guha Graduate Research Scholarship in Cellular and Molecular Biology

To be awarded upon the recommendation of the Biology Department to the outstanding M.Sc. candidate entering the graduate program in either Botany, Zoology, Microbiology or Biochemistry, whose research activities are located on the UTM Campus.

• 2018-2019 - Sigi Maho (Reisz Lab)
• 2017-2018 – Priscilla Valentino (Erclik Lab)
• 2016-2017 – Wassim Elkhaitb (Senatore Lab)