Name: Xiaohan Zhou

MSc or PhD Candidate: PhD Candidate

Location of Undergraduate Education: HBSc., Nanjing University

Name of the Lab at CPS: Gradinaru Lab

Selected Awards: Best Oral Presentation at the Trainee Session (23rd GPCR Retreat), CPS Research Visit Fellowship Program (2023)

Selected Research Contributions: 

Local Confinement within Plasma Membrane Nanodomain

Iza Pawlowski, MSc student in the Halfar Lab, won the best poster award at the 2026 Queen’s Northern Research Symposium! 

Three new publications from the Shin Lab highlight advances in protein design with potential applications in cancer therapeutics, gene regulation, and biosensors.

The research showcases novel engineered proteins, including tools that target genetic pathways and new approaches using phage-assisted evolution to optimize protein function.

Experimental methods have advanced to be able to measure the structure and dynamics of single molecules such as proteins. One of the most common tools we use for these measurements is light; by attaching dyes to the molecule of interest, we can infer its conformations using a technique known as smFRET. In hopes of making this technique more quantitative, in this work Aiyan Brown outline a novel computational approach to simulating smFRET which markedly improves the efficiency and resolution of calculations.

In general, organisms must sink and become buried to become fossilized. Therefore, organisms which rapidly sink are more likely to become fossilized and be overrepresented in fossil collections. Johnathan Sorrentino et al. recorded how long it took crickets and bumblebees to sink in still water of different salinity: freshwater, seawater, and hypersaline water. They also monitored individual cricket legs and forewings in the same water salinities.

Name: Milagros (Mili) Gutierrez Seia

MSc or PhD Candidate: PhD Candidate

Location of Undergraduate Education: Universidad del Desarrollo, Santiago, Chile

Name of the Lab at CPS: Schoenbohm Lab

Selected Awards: Hugh Snyder International Scholarship In Earth Sciences

Selected Research Contributions: First author on paper: Pre-Andean deformation and i

Name: Maria Jose Botero

MSc or PhD Candidate: PhD Candidate

Location of Undergraduate Education: H.B.Sc.

Syrus Kenyon, working with both the Ogata and Korzyński labs, published his first lead authored paper in Crystal Growth & Design as part of the special issue “Design of Crystals via Crystallization Processes” reporting a phase-transformation strategy for the synthesis and in situ polymer modification of a copper-based metal-organic framework, HKUST-1. While HKUST-1 displays intrinsic catalytic activity useful for sensing purposes, it is notably susceptible to degradation from water exposure.

Name: Hoi Leung (Jeremy) Pun

MSc or PhD Candidate: PhD Candidate

Location of Undergraduate Education: H.B.Sc. University of Toronto

Name of the Lab at CPS: Lui Lab

Selected Awards: Mitacs Global Link Research Award - Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Ontario Graduate Scholarship

Jeremy, please tell us about yourself and your journey as a PhD Candidate!

Name: Kaitlin McNeil

MSc or PhD Candidate: PhD Candidate

Location of Undergraduate Education: H.B.Sc. University of Toronto

Name of the Lab at CPS: Moore Lab

Kaitlin, please tell us about yourself and your journey as a PhD Candidate!

How did you come to UTM? What interested you to join a lab here?