FACULTY HIGHLIGHTS

The Faculty of Science received a 2017 Accolades Award from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). We were awarded a Bronze Medal in the category of Community Relations Programs, Projects, and Special Events for excellence in marketing and communications for our inaugural York Science Forum, “Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs.”

The Faculty hosted our first Science & Business Workshop of 2017, with about 90 graduate students in attendance. The event featured a keynote address by Dr. Truong Ta, senior director of Immunization Policy at Sanofi Pasteur.

Professor Emeritus David Mackenzie Logan died peacefully at his home in Tottenham, ON, on January 17. He was in his 80th year. YFile included a tribute to Professor Logan.

CONGRATULATIONS

John McDermott (Biology) was renewed for a second five-year term as McLaughlin Research Chair.

Jianhong Wu (Math & Stats) received funding support from GlaxoSmithKline ($150,000) for the research project “Predicting risk of tick-borne encephalitis with changes in climate, habitation and recreational activities.”

Ernie Hamm (Science & Technology Studies) was elected President of the History of the Earth Sciences Society for 2017-2018.

YorkUniverse broadcast its 300th radio show from the York Observatory.

Paul Delaney (Physics & Astronomy) presented “The state of our understanding about the Milky Way Galaxy, past present and future” at the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Hamilton Centre.

Adam Muzzin (Physics & Astronomy) presented “The Most Distant Galaxies in the Universe: What we know, and what the James Webb Space Telescope will tell us” at the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada’s Speaker’s Night.

Hélène Mialet (Science & Technology Studies) presented “Repenser le sujet à l’heure du numérique” at the Les entretiens du nouveau monde industriel 2016 (Paris). The conference focused on the philosophical impacts and implications of the shifting frontiers of biomedicine, artificial intelligence, the data economy and transhumanism.

Dawn Bazely (Biology) delivered a special lecture titled “Plants and People of the Canadian Arctic” as part of the Big Freeze event hosted by the Royal Botanical Gardens (Hamilton).

Sampa Bhadra (Physics & Astronomy) is co-chair of the 11th International Workshop on Neutrino-Nucleus Interactions in the Few-GeV Region to be held at the Fields Institute in June 2017.

PhD candidate Rehan Siddiqui (supervised by Brendan Quine, Physics & Astronomy) received a Professional Physicist License from the Canadian Association of Physicists.

RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Scaffold Free Bio-orthogonal Assembly of 3-Dimensional Cardiac Tissue via Cell Surface Engineering – Nature Scientific Reports (2016)

• Muhammad Yousaf (Chemistry) and his team applied an innovative cell surface engineering technology developed in his lab to construct a scaffold-free 3D cardiac tissue for the first time.

MEDIA

Hélène Mialet (STS) published a blog post about Stephen Hawking for the Committee for the Anthropology of Science, Technology & Computing.

Paul Delaney (Physics & Astronomy) spoke to CBC Radio’s Here and Now about YorkUniverse’s 300th broadcast, CBC Radio’s Quirks & Quarks about light pillars, CJAD800AM about the 2016 highlights in space science, and SiriusXM about the 25th anniversary of Roberta Bondar’s flight into space.

Sapna Sharma (Biology) was featured a podcast of People Behind the Science with Marie McNeely .

Research by PhD student Alex Filazzola (supervised by Christopher Lortie, Biology) was profiled by United Press International. He used scat sniffer dogs to study endangered lizards and the importance of shrubs in preserving lizard populations in the face of climate change.

Scott Menary (Physics & Astronomy) was featured in the inaugural issue of Brainstorm, a new research and innovation edition of YFile.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Feb 7: Major Science & Health Refresh – Town Hall Meeting, 3-4:30 pm in Senate Chamber, N940 Ross Building.

Feb 7: Free film screening of THE MESSENGER, hosted by the Faculty of Environmental Studies and featuring Bridget Stutchbury (Biology). 5:30pm Nat Taylor Cinema, Ross Building, N102. RSVP: fes.yorku.ca/events/messenger/

Feb 9: The inaugural Markham YorkU Scholars Hub “When Brain Proteins Go Rogue” kicks off with a presentation by Derek Wilson (Chemistry). Register: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/markham-yorku-scholars-hub-when-brain-proteins-go-rogue-tickets-28921074713?aff=es2

Mar 8: Faculty of Science Honours & Awards Ceremony, 7-9 pm in LAS – Lecture Hall A. Registration required: https://science-awards-2017.eventbrite.ca

Mar 18: 45th Southern Ontario Undergraduate Student Chemistry Conference, hosted by the Department of Chemistry at York: http://www.souscc45.ca/

Apr 1: York Region Science & Technology Fair at York: http://yrstf.info.yorku.ca/