PhD candidate blends engineering and biology in award-winning research project

Tuesday, December 3, 2019

Yannick in the lab
When he was a young boy growing up in Burkina Faso, Yannick Traore’s dad didn’t like to buy him toys. Yannick had a habit of taking things apart just to figure out how to put them back together. Even as a child, he needed to understand how things worked.

Today, Yannick’s putting that curiosity to good use as a PhD candidate in Prof. Emmanuel Ho’s lab.

“I appreciate that in Dr. Ho’s lab I’m not confined to one thing,” he reflects. “My work requires me to approach a problem from both the biology side of things and the engineering side. Combining these ideas is rewarding and exciting – I meet lots of people from different fields and faculties, and I bring a unique perspective to these conversations.”

Yannick was recently awarded a Canadian Graduate Scholarship for his doctoral work through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), one of Canada’s three major government research funding bodies. This prestigious award allows Yannick to advance his work on developing unique treatments for HIV.


Learn more about Yannick's research.