UM TodayDr. Christopher Anderson – UM Today

Neuroscientist thrives in faculty role as researcher, teacher, mentor

Annette Elvers — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 18:38:49 +0000

As a child, Dr. Jillian Stobart dreamed of being a teacher. Now she helps shape the minds of future researchers and pharmacists while advancing the field of neuroscience.

Stobart was born in Saskatchewan and grew up in several small communities across the Prairies. She completed an honours bachelor’s degree in biochemistry through the UM co-op program in 2006.

“The co-op program was a great way to explore different research areas,” she remembers.

After a co-op term studying with Dr. Christopher Anderson, director of UM’s neuroscience research program, Stobart was hooked on investigating the circuitry of the brain. Rather than pursuing a master’s, she went directly into earning her PhD in the department of pharmacology and therapeutics in the Max Rady College of Medicine.

After completing her doctorate in 2012, Stobart went on to a postdoctoral fellowship in Switzerland. In 2018, she joined the UM College of Pharmacy as an assistant professor.

In this role, she contributes to research, teaching and service. She leads a lab that investigates the role of brain cells called astrocytes and pericytes in brain health and disease, with the goal of identifying new treatments for neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.

“My research is taking advantage of some novel and exciting microscope techniques and new animal models,” she told UM Today in 2020 after receiving an Early Career Investigator Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Stobart also received a 2020 Terry G. Falconer Memorial Rh Institute Foundation Emerging Researcher Award. “Training future scientists is an important part of my research program, so I look forward to growing the number of undergraduate and graduate students in my lab and building a collaborative team,” she told UM Today.

In addition to planning and supervising experiments, writing grant applications, publishing papers and mentoring grad students, Stobart co-ordinates a first-year pharmacy course, delivers lectures and serves on university committees and panels.

She says the competencies she developed during graduate studies that prepared her for her current job include organizational skills (setting goals, breaking down goals into steps), communication skills (giving oral and poster presentations, writing), and collaborating effectively.

Her PhD thesis work and involvement in science outreach activities via the Manitoba Neuroscience Network were instrumental in building these skills, she says.

As a postdoctoral fellow in Switzerland, she had the opportunity to be involved in research management at a higher level, permitting her to master competencies such as budget management, ethical compliance and navigating administrative structures.

Having the mindset of a lifelong learner, Stobart is continually working on skills that help her contribute more effectively to research and higher education.

“For instance, I’m now trying to improve my management skills in order to be a more effective leader to my research team,” she says.

Her advice to current graduate students who are weighing career paths is to pick the direction that is most interesting to them.

“In the end, it comes down to being excited about your work. That will help with motivation, no matter what direction you choose.

Researcher examines cellular function for clues to brain disorders

Annette Elvers — Fri, 01 Feb 2019 19:55:02 +0000

Dr. Jillian Stobart’s commputer monitor displays what looks like an array of stars: thousands of tiny green lights on a vast field of black, like an entire galaxy pulsing and twinkling.

Stobart [B.Sc.(Hons.)/06, PhD/12] sets the scene, explaining that the lights are astrocytes. They’re a type of glial cells – the supporting cells of the nervous system – not celestial bodies. “They do look a lot like stars, though,” she laughs.

The video shows a live mouse brain responding to stimulus, precisely targeted and highly magnified. The cells have been treated to fluoresce when they sense a particular chemical, calcium.

And the twinkling? That’s when the brain cells she’s targeting are activated. “They’re releasing the chemicals that signal to the next cell,” Stobart says. When the sensors fluoresce, that’s when the secrets of the brain’s universe are revealed.

Stobart, an assistant professor in the College of Pharmacy, once thought she’d like to be a high school teacher. With an easy manner and the ability to make even the most complex ideas come to life, she’s a natural for the classroom.

But while earning her bachelor’s degree, she fell in love with research – specifically, the unexplored reaches of the brain.

Stobart worked in three different labs during her time as a U of M undergraduate, including the National Microbiology Lab, where she studied mad cow disease. That’s where she first encountered astrocytes. “I really became fascinated because there’s so much that we don’t understand about these cells,” she says. Not only did the opportunity fire her curiosity, it also helped solidify her professional ambitions. “I experienced firsthand what research life was like,” she says.“We have the freedom to ask big questions that could potentially redefine our views of the brain or brain disorders, but we must also be tenacious because our ideas and experiments don’t always go to plan.”

After a term studying with Christopher Anderson [PhD/98], director of the U of M’s neuroscience research program, Stobart was hooked. She completed her PhD in pharmacology with Anderson, then went on to a postdoctoral fellowship in Zurich, Switzerland.

In the spring of 2018, she joined the College of Pharmacy and embarked on a career that gives her both time in the classroom and a lab to pursue her research. “It’s the best of both worlds,” she says.

Born in Moose Jaw, Sask., Stobart and her family moved often during her childhood, following her father’s assignments as an RCMP officer. She has lived in Winnipeg the longest and now considers the city home.

As her research unfolds, it seems that one discovery always leads to new avenues of exploration. “I’m applying a lot of the tools used to study astrocytes to now look at pericytes,” says Stobart, referring to another type of brain cell. “I’m trying to study how these cells regulate what the neurons are doing in the brain and how this changes in disease.”

She has received a two-year grant from Research Manitoba of $65,000 per year to study pericytes.

When she has deepened her understanding of cellular activity in the brain, Stobart plans to shift her focus to treatment. “I’m an astrocyte biologist, but I’m also a pharmacologist,” she says. “My long-term goal is something tangible – developing drugs to target cells and to treat disease.”

She’s not thinking small, either. She’s interested in conditions that are impacted by damage or loss to the pericytes and astrocytes – that’s major illnesses like Alzheimer’s disease and stroke.

“The neuroscience community is only just beginning to consider astrocytes and pericytes in disease. It wouldn’t surprise me if ultimately, my research could be applied to a number of different brain disorders where these cells have been the missing link.”

Federal government invests $10.2 million towards research through CIHR’s project grant program

Rob Nay — Sat, 17 Dec 2016 19:11:53 +0000

On Dec. 9, Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Member of Parliament for Winnipeg Centre, announced, on behalf of Minister of Health Jane Philpott, that 16 grants were being awarded to health researchers at the University of Manitoba, for a total investment of $10.2 million through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Project Grant program.

The Government of Canada is the country’s largest investor in health research through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

“Some of Canada’s most important health discoveries are being made right here in Winnipeg. This announcement highlights the bright minds and the strong support for research and innovation at the University of Manitoba,” said Ouellette.

Health research leads to discoveries and knowledge that helps improve the health of Canadians through new treatments, health services and health promotion and disease prevention programs.

The funding will support the work of researchers at the University of Manitoba across the spectrum of health research areas, ranging from microbiology and nanoparticles, to healthcare delivery and population-based wellness strategies.

Two U of M researchers shared snapshots of their collaborative research projects.

Dr. Julie Ho, associate professor of internal medicine and immunology in the Max Rady College of Medicine (Rady Faculty) and a team of researchers at the U of M will lead a new clinical trial led that could change the current standard of care for monitoring kidney transplant patients and potentially increase the longevity of successful kidney transplants.

Ho, Principal investigator on the study, says many Canadians don’t realize that kidney disease is a silent killer. “It’s actually really sad.… When patients tell their families they have kidney disease, it doesn’t have the same implication as if they were to say ‘I have cancer.’ But the mortality rate with kidney disease is actually just as bad as with many cancers, although there is less public awareness about it.” [Read more about this study.]

Marissa Becker [MD/99], an associate professor in community health sciences (U of M) with cross-appointments to internal medicine and medical microbiology, will lead a project designed to understand how the consequences of conflict, migration and disrupted health services affect risk in the context of HIV, sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and hepatitis C virus (HCV). The study is being conducted by an international, inter-disciplinary team in order to understand this complex public health issue.

The study will generate important information for its Ukrainian partners, who provide HIV prevention programs in Dnipropetrovsk, and address an important knowledge gap globally.
“We’re working with local program partners, researchers and policy makers,” Becker says. “We’ve been doing work in Ukraine for a number of years now. It’s important to us to sustain and further develop those partnerships for impactful work.” [Read more about this study.]

The following researchers also received funding: