The annual Biology Graduate Symposium will take place virtually on April 27, 2022.
Keynote Speakers:
How to Find Your First Scientific Research Position in Industry
By Ashley Ross, PhD
Somewhere in the Between: Post-doctoral Life and How to Get There
By Matthew McLeod, PhD
Schedule of speakers is listed below. The session links, along with the abstracts, will be sent out to all registrants on April 26.
Schedule of Speakers
9:00 am: Opening & Welcome – Dr. Moira Glerum & Rachel Beaver
| Time | Session 1 - Chair: Alexander Douglas | Session 2 - Chair: Alex Umbach |
|---|---|---|
| 9:30 |
Julia Sunga The role of social preferences in the organization of a gregarious mammal colony |
Yifan Yang A resampling method for RNA-seq analysis |
| 9:45 |
Danny McIsaac Local and landscape drivers of frog communities in urban stormwater management facilities |
Nilanth Yogadasan A machine learning approach identifies plastomic predictors of C4 photosynthesis in PACMAD grasses |
| 10:00 |
Gwynne Domashinski Fatty adaption: Patterns in energy storage in swarming little brown bats a decade after white-nose exposure |
Harold Hodgins Discovery of ancient neurotoxins |
| 10:15 |
Sean McLay Indications of benthic macroinvertebrate assemblage recovery following wastewater treatment upgrades |
Sean Newbury Transactivation of PDGFRα |
| 10:30 |
Veronica Viljakainen Elucidating microbial plastic degrading enzymes (PDEs) using a metagenomics- driven approach |
10: 45 - Break
11:00: Keynote Speakers – Dr. Ashley Ross and Dr. Matthew McLeod
12:00: Lunch Break
| Time | Session 3 - Chair: Rachel McNamee | Session 4 - Chair: Jersey Fontz |
|---|---|---|
| 1:00 |
Patrick Breadner The partitioning behaviour of SARS- CoV-2 in wastewater |
Britney Firth Seasonal and environmental effects on upper thermal limits and oxygen tolerances of Eastern Sand Darter (Ammocrypta pellucida) |
| 1:15 |
Brian Youden Multifunctional gold-liposomes as an all-in-one platform for radiotherapy |
Xiaoqing Dang Development of diagnostic strategies for salmonidae diseases based on Oncorhynchus mykiss culture Freshwater samples |
| 1:30 |
Jessica Luc Profiling the host transcriptome response to SARS-CoV-2 and its intrahost genetic diversity |
Rachel Dawe Impacts of wastewater treatment plant effluent and pharmaceutical exposure on innate cytokine expression of darters (Etheostoma spp.) in the Grand River watershed |
| 1:45 |
Emily Baker Investigating the role of the transcription factor hindsight in a notch-induced tumour model |
Mehdi Moslemi Aqdam Understanding among-lake variability of fish mercury concentrations in the Canadian subarctic |
| 2:00 |
Rohini Prakash Construction and optimization of a sDNA vector production system for gene therapy platform |
Marissa Zago Effects of invasive Phragmites australis management on avian species diversity in the coastal wetlands of Long Point, Ontario |
| 2:15 |
Rebecca Quinn Characterization of the mechanistic roles of Rif1-Glc7 in DNA double- strand break |
Madeleine Prater Arctic marine food web structure |
2:30 pm: Break
| Time | Session 5 - Chair: Michelle McKnight | Session 6 - Chair: Spencer Weinstein |
|---|---|---|
| 2:45 |
Adrian Van Dyk The Interaction of the Escherichia coli CP-Lyase and shikimate pathways with glyphosate |
Hadeel Abed Characterizing the seasonal presence of cyanobacterial toxin & nitrogen-fixing genes in an oligotrophic watershed using metagenomic analyses |
| 3:00 |
Nicole Fraser Crystal structure of a fungal polyglycine hydrolase using a RoseTTAFold model |
Hannah Thibault Reconstructing past variation in lake water balances to identify the role of a shifting hydroclimate at watersheds upstream of the drying Peace-Athabasca Delta |
| 3:15 |
Cody Collis Viral communities in freshwater environments investigated through metagenomic analysis of Big Turkey Lake, Ontario |
Lauryn Pinks Light and nutrient availability interactively mediate heterotrophic carbon processing in stream biofilms through algal priming: insights from artificial and natural streams |
| 3:30 |
Nikhil George Virus-host interactions in a municipal landfill include non-specific viruses, hyper-targeted viral populations, and interviral conflicts |
Lauren Banks Does scale matter in determining the role of groundwater input as a driver of ecological function and structure in a headwater stream network? |
3:45 pm: Closing Remarks – Rachel Beaver & Dr. Moira Glerum
5:00 pm: End of Symposium