Great grad gathering

End-of-year research showcase and celebration for graduate students at UTM

Last week, the 2022-23 academic term for graduate students at UTM wrapped up with the annual Graduate Research Colloquium and a spirited celebration at the Blind Duck Pub to commemorate the community’s efforts over the past year.

“It is so wonderful to see you all here together this evening,” said Professor Ajay Rao, UTM’s vice-dean, graduate studies and postdoctoral affairs, addressing the crowd of approximately 60 people.

“My office is focused on doing more of this – more gathering together, eating and drinking, highlighting your efforts because we all know that being a graduate student or a postdoc is a lot of work and we want to celebrate your accomplishments.”

The Graduate Research Colloquium (GRC) included in-person poster presentations on May 2nd in the atrium of the Instructional Building and virtual oral presentations on May 3. There was a great range of presentations by 17 students from the Departments of Anthropology, Biology, Cell & Systems Biology, Chemical & Physical Sciences, Chemistry, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Geography, Geomatics and Environment, and Psychology, as well as the Master of Science in Sustainability Management (MScSM), Institute for Management and Innovation.

The end-of-year celebration, held on May 4, included music, prizes, and games for the participants, as well as awards given out to winning GRC presenters and recipients of UTM Graduate and Postdoctoral Awards.

PhD candidate Matthew Tung (supervisor Professor Andrew Beharry, Chemical & Physical Sciences) received the award for best oral presentation for his talk “Shining a Light on Cancer: Developing New Photosensitizers for Photodynamic Therapy,” and MScSM student Hannah MacRae won the award for best poster presentation for her submission, “The Use of Green Bonds in Financing Energy Efficiency Retrofits” (supervised by Professor Laura Tozer, UofT Scarborough Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences).

The grad award recipients, who all received commemorative certificates at the event, are as follows: Research Award recipient was PhD candidate Benjamin Tsang from Cell & Systems Biology (nominated by Professor Robert Gerlai, Psychology); Leadership Award winner was PhD candidate Ilapreet Toor from Ecology & Evolutionary Biology (nominated by Professor Melissa Holmes, Psychology); and the Postdoctoral Leadership recipient was Dr. Scott Jess (nominated by Professor Lindsay Schoenbohm, Chemical & Physical Sciences).

The Black, Indigenous, and Racialized Graduate Research Fellowship was awarded to four recipients: two MSc students, including Brittany Mascarenhas from Cell & Systems Biology (endorsed by Professor Hai-Ying (Mary) Cheng, Biology) and Eman Faisal from Anthropology (nominated by Professor Tracy Rogers, Forensics); and two PhD candidates, Ryan Persadie from Women & Gender Studies (nominated by Professor Cassandra Lord, Historical Studies), and Tolulope Babalola from Ecology & Evolutionary Biology (nominated by Professor Rosalind Murray, Biology).

Several of the overall award recipients stood out for their commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI).

In her nomination letter for Dr. Jess (pictured, with Prof Ajay Rao) for the Postdoctoral Leadership Award, Schoenbohm remarked on his incredible mentorship and advocacy related to EDI.

“I have never met someone so acutely aware of and sensitive to his place of privilege, and interested in supporting and understanding the needs of others who don’t share the same,” said Schoenbohm.

“He is responsible for advancing most of the EDI initiatives in the Department of Chemical and Physical Sciences in the last two years, including our core values statement and laboratory agreement and our recent deployment of a climate and demographic survey.”

The 2023 Graduate Research Colloquium and end-of-year celebration was organized by Karolina Szymanski, graduate programs manager at UTM, along with Anna Reale, office supervisor for the Office of the Vice-Principal, Academic and Dean, and PhD student Taylor Irvine, president of UTM’s Association of Graduate Students.

“We wanted to take this opportunity to honour UTM award winners and celebrate the participants and judges of the Graduate Research Colloquium,” said Szymanski.

“We would like to thank the all of the participants, as well as the Graduate Research Colloquium judges, Professors Ashley Monks from Psychology and Scott Prosser from Chemical & Physical Sciences, as well as UTM Librarians Mike Serafin and Amelia Clarkson, and PhD students Emma Galarneau and Gregor McEdwards. It is thanks to the hard work of the graduate community, as well as the volunteerism of these individuals that our campus really comes to life.”

The full agenda of student presentations from the 2023 Graduate Research Colloquium included the following:

Oral presentations

• Ashley Moo-Choy, Masters’ student, Anthropology, “Evaluation of Transfer, Persistence, and Recovery of Touch DNA from Mobile Phones”
• Jacy Newfeld, Masters’ student, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, “Rapid host adaptation of a bacterial plant pathogen to a resistant host is driven by genomic island loss”
• Stephanie Shishis, Masters’ student, Cell & Systems Biology, “The first steps towards optimizing zebrafish housing conditions: The effect of tank size & fish density on the behaviour of zebrafish”
• Ashley Smith, PhD candidate, Anthropology, “When Bone Lights Up: A novel way to label bone proteins & cells, and its potential uses”
• Matthew Tung, PhD candidate, Chemical & Physical Sciences, “Shining a Light on Cancer: Developing New Photosensitizers for Photodynamic Therapy”
• Sarah Quail, PhD candidate, Chemistry, “Understanding how the regulatory (R) region regulates Ycf1p function on a molecular basis”
• Justin Van Houten, PhD candidate, Chemical & Physical Sciences, “Effect of changing absolute precursor concentration and precursor ratio on bioinspired peroxidase mimicking Cu CPs Structure-Function relationships”
• Hanlin Zhou, PhD candidate, Geography, Geomatics and Environment, “Investigating the association between the socioeconomic environment of the service area and fast food visitation: a context-based crystal growth approach”

Poster presentations

• Nicholas Alonzi, Masters’ student, Chemistry, “Assessing functional impacts of disease-associated mutations in G-protein ‘other’”
• Sherry Du, Masters’ student, Biology, “Road salt pollution alters sex-bias in emerging mosquito population”

• Liam Haas-Neill, PhD candidate, Chemical & Physical Sciences, “The Structural Basis of mCherry Fluorescence Lifetime Reduction in PEG”
• Hannah MacRae, MScSM student, IMI, “The Use of Green Bonds in Financing Energy Efficiency Retrofits”
• Ilia Maria, PhD candidate, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, “Investigating freshwater insect biodiversity in urban stormwater ponds in the Greater Toronto Area”
• Brittany Mascarenhas, PhD candidate, Cell and Systems Biology, “Elucidating the mechanisms by which β-arrestin1 modulates the central mammalian circadian clock”
• Xinye Peng, PhD candidate, Psychology, “Navigation strategy preference among naked mole-rat social phenotypes”
• Sandra Poulson, PhD candidate, Psychology, “Seeing your pain makes me hurt - cholecystokinin receptors in the lateral periaqueductal grey play a role in socially driven nocebo”
• Yousuf O. Ramahi, Masters’ student, Chemistry, “Exploring the Conformational Ensemble of the A2A G Protein-Coupled Receptor”

The Office of the Vice-Dean, Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs aims to continue building the graduate community on campus and celebrate the accomplishments of its graduate students. Visit their website for updates on upcoming events and opportunities.