Alumnus wins Nobel Prize in Physics

In October, the Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that a UM alumnus, acclaimed cosmologist Dr. James Peebles [BSc(Hons)/58, DSc/89], had won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Dr. Peebles, professor emeritus at Princeton University, was cited for “theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology,” and shares the award with two Swiss astronomers, Michel Mayor, 77, and Didier Queloz, 53, who discovered a planet orbiting a binary star.

During a news conference on Oct. 8, Peebles expressed gratitude to the University of Manitoba. “I’m deeply indebted to the department of physics and its faculty and fellow students for showing me that I love physics.” Read more.

University of Manitoba announces 12th President and Vice-Chancellor

The University of Manitoba announced in November it had appointed a demonstrated bridge-builder and a committed leader in community engagement, a sought-after global economic outlook expert, and a proud Manitoban, Dr. Michael Benarroch, as its 12th president and vice-chancellor.

Raised in Winnipeg, Dr. Benarroch will take office as UM president and vice-chancellor on July 1, 2020, succeeding Dr. David T. Barnard, who completes 12 years of distinguished service as president.

Dr. Benarroch is currently the provost and vice-president, academic at Ryerson University in Toronto, a role he has held since 2017, providing leadership as Ryerson’s chief academic officer and chief operating officer. Prior to his time at Ryerson, he led the I. H. Asper School of Business at the University of Manitoba as dean, and was founding dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Winnipeg. Read more.

Head of the class

He remembers how nervous he was his first day at the University of Manitoba. Backpack in tow‚ he navigated through the Isbister Building and found his classroom. Students‚ all older than him‚ had begun to trickle in. The 19-year-old took his place at the front‚ wearing a carefully chosen blazer and bowtie to offset his boyish looks.

“My name is Aandeg Muldrew and I’ll be your instructor.”

It was two years ago that Muldrew became the university’s youngest sessional instructor‚ teaching introductory Ojibwe at the Faculty of Arts Language Centre. Read more.

UM enters new era with appointment of first-ever VP (Indigenous)

Dr. Catherine Cook is the University of Manitoba’s inaugural Vice-President (Indigenous). On Oct. 29, 2019, the Executive Committee, on behalf of the Board of Governors, approved the appointment of Dr. Cook, Vice-Dean (Indigenous) in the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, to the position of Vice-President (Indigenous), for an interim period to June 30, 2022.

“Dr. Cook has been a strong contributor to the University of Manitoba both within her home faculty and across the university. Her insight has been widely sought-after by governments, boards and agencies, and she has excelled as a leader, an advisor and a collaborator,” said President David Barnard.

Dr. Cook will transition from her responsibilities in the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences to the Vice-President (Indigenous) position, beginning Jan. 1, 2020. Read more.

University of Manitoba injects $2.4 billion into city and province

More than $2.4 billion in province-wide economic activity is stimulated by the University of Manitoba, according to a study released in December.

The University of Manitoba Economic Impact Analysis for 2014-2019, produced by PricewaterhouseCoopers and commissioned by the University of Manitoba, shows that the University has far-reaching positive impacts upon all Manitobans. Read more.

Six minds that will change our society now call the U of M home

A record six University of Manitoba graduate students are recipients of 2019 Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships.

These awards, considered the Canadian equivalent of the United Kingdom’s Rhodes Scholarships, help recruit and keep in Canada top doctoral students from across the country and around the world. Read more.

University of Manitoba unveils new logo

The university began exploring the evolution of its brand in 2018. Since then, more than 7,000 students, faculty, alumni, donors and community partners have joined in the conversation, including many who participated in brand focus group sessions across Manitoba, as well as in Calgary and Toronto.

While the brand story is still evolving, a new logo was unveiled in June.

The U of M’s new visual identity reflects a brand that positions the university as a welcoming and inclusive community uniquely strengthened by Indigenous knowledges and perspectives. The new logo acknowledges the past and looks forward to the future, expressing a strong connection to the Prairies, learning in a digital world and a commitment to reconciliation. Read more.

University welcomes $10 million gift, new graduate school

The University of Manitoba has received a transformational gift to the Front and Centre campaign that will enhance the I.H. Asper School of Business’ role as a leader in business education and research.

Stu Clark, an esteemed alumnus and entrepreneur, has donated $10 million to the I.H. Asper School of Business at University of Manitoba. In recognition of this gift, the university is establishing the Stu Clark Graduate School at the I.H. Asper School of Business. Read more.

Applied Health Sciences student takes top spot at 3MT finals

Kevin Boreskie practiced his Three Minute Thesis (3MT) while driving in his vehicle with the radio cranked up. He thought that if he could master his presentation with that much distraction, he was set to succeed.

This creative method of preparation paid off for the doctoral student in Applied Health Sciences, a joint program between the College of Rehabilitation Sciences and the Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation Management. Boreskie took home the Dr. Archie McNicol Prize for First Place ($2,500) at the 3MT finals held on March 18 on the Fort Garry campus. Read more.

2019 Distinguished Alumni Awards Celebration of Excellence

Over six decades, the Distinguished Alumni Awards have celebrated outstanding University of Manitoba alumni including Olympians, Nobel prize winners, and world-renowned advocates of human rights.

On May 8, 2019, at the University of Manitoba Distinguished Alumni Awards, five new recipients were welcomed into this list of esteemed individuals. This year, the awards celebration returned to the university’s Fort Garry campus, where the Manitoba Room in UMSU University Centre was transformed into a multi-stage event, complete with musical productions and inspiring conversations. Read more.

Across Canada, women continue to be underrepresented in engineering education and in the engineering profession. That’s why long-time UM supporters, Gerry and Barb Price and their family, have supported the Faculty of Engineering’s vision of greater gender equality by establishing the Price Graduate Scholarships for Women in Engineering.

Gerry Price [BSc(ME)/70, MSc/72, LLD(Hon)/17] and Barb Price [BHEc/69, CertEd/70], along with the Price Family Foundation and their company, Price Industries Limited, are some of the UM’s strongest champions. This is their eighth major gift to the Front and Centre campaign.

After graduating with two degrees from the University of Manitoba, Gerry Price earned a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics from Lehigh University in 1976. He strongly values graduate programs and knows first hand the impact graduate students have on research, innovation and discovery.

“As the president of a company that relies on engineers, I’m seeing the impact female engineers are having on our industry every day,” says Dr. Price. “I hope that this scholarship encourages more women to consider graduate work at UM and eventually shape our field for the better.”

The Price Graduate Scholarships for Women in Engineering were established through a $600,000 gift from the Price Family Foundation. Every year for the next five years, 10 female engineering graduate students will receive $12,000 each to support their studies and further their research in the field of engineering. This November, the first 10 students received their awards.

To receive the award, students must be in a graduate engineering program and have a high level of achievement. The selection committee looks for individuals who have positively impacted their departments, fellow students, and the university.

“The first 10 recipients of this award are all exemplary students who are incredible role models for their peers,” says Dr. Jonathan Beddoes, Dean, Faculty of Engineering. “They are the future of engineering and we are so pleased that the Price family has established this prestigious scholarship.”

For more stories about the enduring legacy of Front and Centre, click here.

In recognition of their transformative donation to the Front and Centre campaign, which is supporting renovations on the fifth floor of the Drake Centre, the building’s student centre has been officially named the “Arni Thorsteinson and Susan Glass Student Commons.”

“Drs. Thorsteinson and Glass are influential philanthropic leaders in the Winnipeg community and great friends of the University of Manitoba and the Asper School of Business. Their generosity over the years has had a profound impact on the lives of our students,” says Dr. Gady Jacoby, Dean and CPA Manitoba Chair in Business Leadership, Asper School of Business.

Dr. Arni Thorsteinson [B.Comm. (Hons.)/71, LL.D./09] and Dr. Susan Glass [B.Comm./67, LL.D./15] have donated to UM for the past 40 years, supporting the construction of the Drake Centre and the Nursing Capital campaign, as well as supporting research chairs and the Hartley T. Richardson Student Support fund. They have also contributed their efforts to the Front and Centre campaign, serving on the President’s Campaign Team.

This recent gift is updating the teaching and learning environment in the I.H. Asper School of Business by creating a dedicated space for graduate students and staff in the Stu Clark Graduate School that supports its programs for learning, study and administration.

“Investments like this improve the student experience, helping them reach their potential and become the next generation of leaders,” said Drs. Thorsteinson and Glass. “As UM B.Comm graduates, we cherish our relationship with the school and the University of Manitoba, and are thrilled to be able to contribute in this way.”

This sentiment was echoed by MBA student Emily Sanders, who spoke at the event about her time as an undergrad student, spending late nights in the Drake Centre. She said that when she returned six years later, she was amazed to see the changes to the library, study areas and atrium.

“With your generous gift,” she said to the donors, “these positive changes will continue to be made for the Graduate Program. Your financial contribution allows the Asper School to increase the number of classrooms for the Graduate Program, encourage increased collaboration by way of breakout pods and active learning facilities, and allow us to connect to business leaders globally with next generation technology, among many others.”

At today’s celebration, fellow B.Comm graduate and Chair of the Front and Centre campaign, Paul Soubry, announced that, with this gift, the campaign has reached $369,507,253.00 toward its $500 million fundraising goal.

Stu Clark [BComm(Hons)/76, LLD/11], one of Canada’s most prolific oil and gas entrepreneurs, knows that support for young entrepreneurs is key to bringing big ideas to life. Clark has long been passionate about integrating entrepreneurial education into the commerce curriculum. That’s why he created an incubator for ideas – the Stu Clark Centre for Entrepreneurship (SCCE) – in the heart of the I.H. Asper School of Business.

Just last week, Clark announced a $10 million gift to the University of Manitoba to expand opportunities available to future entrepreneurs and open a graduate school, The Stu Clark Graduate School at the I.H. Asper School of Business.

To date, Clark has donated $19.3 million to the University of Manitoba.

To highlight the importance of funding entrepreneurial education, UM Today spoke with current and former SCCE students about how Clark’s generosity impacted their careers as entrepreneurs.

Keegan Slijker, a student in the Native Studies department in the Faculty of Arts, is the founder of Fitness Up North which organizes youth basketball camps in Canada’s northern communities to improve physical literacy. He won 1^st place in the Business Plan Competition and the people’s choice award at the 2019 Manitoba New Venture Championships, hosted by the SCCE.

Last August, Josh Zaporzan [BComm(Hons)/16] became the CEO and co-owner of athletic apparel company Longball Athletics. While at SCCE, he and a team of Asper students developed the MedicHero app, which won first place at the 2017 Apex National Business Plan Competition.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP IS AN AMBITIOUS CAREER PATH TO TAKE. WHAT HAVE YOU FOUND TO BE THE MOST REWARDING AND MOST CHALLENGING?

ZAPORZAN: The most challenging part is the steep learning curve with every new business. Time management is crucial and it is hard to be disciplined enough to complete tasks in a timely manner. Patience is also a challenge – every entrepreneur wants their business to grow fast and in the technology-driven environment we live in we’ve been conditioned to expect things instantly. Businesses don’t grow over night and it’s imperative to ensure you build a proper foundation before you scale. As entrepreneurs, we face challenges everyday but what makes a good entrepreneur is being able to face these challenges and learn from mistakes.

SLIJKER: The best is being your own boss. I love arranging my schedule how I like and getting to choose who I work with. The most challenging is ensuring the continuity of your business. As a start-up, you have to direct your attention toward so many different things, and you want to be the best at what you do. It’s not easy to manage, develop and facilitate so many different components of your business all at the same time, but it sure keeps things interesting and challenging. 

DO YOU FEEL YOU HAD AN ADVANTAGE GOING INTO ENTREPRENEURSHIP, HAVING BEEN THROUGH THE SCCE?

ZAPORZAN: Absolutely. The SCCE gave me the confidence needed in order to be an entrepreneur in the real world! I was able to meet many inspirational people and leaders in our community who became friends, business colleagues and mentors. These connections are major components of my success: I learned quickly that I can’t do things alone and having a strong support team is crucial for surviving as an entrepreneur.

SLIJKER: I’ve always had an interest in entrepreneurship, but I never really knew how to go about starting a business. The SCCE validated my ideas, which made me believe in myself and gave me the confidence that Fitness Up North is something that can really take off.

Venture coach Christos Vasilarakis [BComm(Hons)/15] helped me write a comprehensive four-year business plan which helped me assess and mitigate risks, improve my revenue and retention rate, and gave me a financial forecast for my business. I agree that the SCCE is a great resource to learn who to connect with. The Centre’s director, Debra Jonasson-Young, has a large network and helped me connect with interesting firms in the business community.

WHAT’S THE BEST ADVICE OR LESSON YOU LEARNED THROUGH THE SCCE?

ZAPORZAN: The biggest and most important is the entrepreneurial mindset required to get through every business day, whether good or bad. I’ve learned that in order to be a successful entrepreneur, hard work, determination, persistence and a positive attitude are a must to survive and thrive daily.

SLIJKER: As a first-time entrepreneur, you won’t know everything. You’ll run into unexpected situations, or things don’t go as planned and you might need some guidance handling it. I’ve learned it’s very important to make your own decisions, but it’s also wise to seek advice and/or guidance if needed.

WHY DO YOU THINK IT’S IMPORTANT TO FUND ENTREPRENEURIAL EDUCATION?

ZAPORZAN: We live in a world where the future belongs to creators and innovators, and that’s why studying entrepreneurship is important. It’s an excellent foundation for the types of creative, innovative ideas we need to succeed in this world and it benefits everyone as it teaches people to cultivate unique skills and think outside the box. Entrepreneurial education also provides individuals with the skills and knowledge to come up with, and pursue, business ideas. This includes helping individuals to learn about core business areas such as finance, sales, marketing, management and accounting, not to mention broader skills such as effective communication, and confidence.

SLIJKER: Entrepreneurs can help grow the economy, solve social problems, create jobs and their innovations may improve our standard of living. I think it is very important to fund entrepreneurial education, as you never know who might have the next big idea. I believe a lot more people are capable of being entrepreneurs but they may just need a little help or guidance to get started.

Stu Clark, an esteemed alumnus and entrepreneur, has donated $10 million to the I.H. Asper School of Business at University of Manitoba. In recognition of this gift, the university is establishing the Stu Clark Graduate School at the I.H. Asper School of Business.

“I believe very strongly in the vision and direction the Asper School and the University of Manitoba have taken towards sparking students’ entrepreneurial spirit,” said Stu Clark. “Supporting our future leaders, and bolstering their potential, is the best investment you can make.”

The announcement was made today by Paul Soubry, chair of the Front and Centre campaign at the luncheon Winnipeg: Great on Purpose hosted by the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce.

“As a city, we have to keep raising the bar; to elevate; to transform,” said Soubry. “Our future is shaped by the quality of research, education and leaders that come out of this important institution and that in turn is influenced by donors like Stu Clark who generously support the work we do.”

Clark [B.Comm.(Hons.)/76, LLD/11] is one of Canada’s most prolific oil and gas entrepreneurs. In 1986 he worked as Chief Financial Officer at Pinnacle Resources and raised $2 million of shareholder capital along with his partners. They sold that company in 1998 for approximately $1 billion. Since then Stu has been involved in the start-up and re-organization of a number of Calgary-based public and private entities and currently sits as director and Chairman of the board of Storm Resources.

This latest gift elevates all graduate programs in the Asper School of business, supporting innovative graduate student research in emerging areas such as behavioural finance, and bolstering scholarships to unprecedented levels.

“We are honoured to have such a generous alumnus who continues to support new students across multiple programs.” said Gady Jacoby, dean, I.H. Asper School of Business. “His gifts provide students with opportunities to thrive. On behalf of the generations of students Stu has will impact, I give a heartfelt thanks.”

One of the U of M’s largest donors, Stu Clark’s lifetime support of the I.H. Asper School of Business totals $19.3 million, and this most recent investment moves the Front and Centre campaign closer to its $500 million goal. His generosity helped the U of M open the Stu Clark Centre for Entrepreneurship in 2008, and fund an endowed chair within it.

“Stu’s tremendous philanthropic support continues to make an indelible mark on our city, and on our university,” said David Barnard, president and vice-chancellor at the U of M. “On behalf of everyone in our community, I want to thank Stu for improving learning opportunities for students, and inspiring and supporting innovators and visionaries.”

Wait times for this diagnostic tool (known as magnetic resonance imaging) can be long, given the high demand. And the test itself is not entirely pleasant—you lie down in a confined space and are told not to move while the machine hammers loudly around you.

It can be anxiety-inducing yet it’s still the preferred imaging option for many diagnoses, and, unlike x-ray and CT, it has no radiation dose.

Physics graduate student and 3MT finalist Kyla Smith wants to help build a better MRI. She’s developing a magnet for a new type of MRI machine, which would spatially encode the body’s signals using radio frequency waves instead of the more traditional (and loud) field gradients.

This new technology is called Transmit Array Spatial Encoding, or TRASE. Smith says it means the machines could run silently and eventually be less expensive to purchase for medical markets that haven’t previously had access to MRI machines.

She is working on this technology under the mentorship of academic supervisors Christopher Bidinosti and Scott King, in partnership with the University of Winnipeg and the National Research Council. Smith says the real-world benefits include greater efficiency, shorter wait times and less patient stress.

“TRASE MRI is an exciting and promising innovation in MRI technology, and contributing to work in this field, in even a small way, feels really good,” says Smith.

Before she was a researcher, Smith followed her childhood dream of becoming an educator. As a high school physics teacher it was her students who inspired her to have the courage and make the leap to return to school.

“When the opportunity for graduate school came up, I realized that the real reason I had never considered it before was because I thought I couldn’t do it. And how could I promote to my physics students that they are capable of learning if I thought there was a limit to my own ability? So here I am, happily proving that my students were right.”

Now she combines her love of teaching with her passion for science and physics by volunteering at the annual Science Rendezvous for school-aged kids hosted by the Faculty of Science.

This carnival-like-event on campus creates a fun environment to introduce children to science, technology, engineering, arts and math (STEAM) at an early age.

“Even now, as a researcher, I’m still an educator. I think the work of teachers is very important,” says Smith. “If there are two things I can talk anyone’s ear off about, they are the importance of good teachers and the value and awesomeness of physics.”

Meet the other new faces of innovation and discovery.

Nivedita’s mind works fast, probably because it knows exactly what it wants to do all the time. Growing up in India she loved watching medical detective shows on TV and her favourite part of the show was when they relied upon molecular biology.

“I just knew I wanted to do those techniques one day!”

She arrived at the U of M in 2012 to do her master’s. Eventually she joined the lab of her current PhD advisory Christine Doucette in the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, but before that they talked about research desires.

“I had an interview with her where she told me about her research program and gave me projects to choose from,” Nivedita, a 3MT finalist, says. “I don’t remember her even going to the second option. I knew I wanted to study a gene that rhythmically oscillates every 12 hours to maintain appropriate functions of the pancreas, which secretes insulin to regulate blood glucose.”

And this is exactly what she does.

Nivedita focuses on a pancreatic clock that controls the amount of insulin being released based on what time of day it is. As each cell in every tissue has an internal clock, the process should, well, run like clockwork. But environmental factors like jet lag and shift work can disrupt our genetic clocks, and that can impact our health on grander scales.

Nivedita found an odd association between the pancreas’ insulin-release process and a specific protein. The protein (uncoupling protein 2) has a straightforward job: During the day when you’re active and eating, levels of this protein go down, allowing for maximum insulin secretion. At night—when we are not supposed to be snacking—levels of the protein go up, suppressing insulin release. Poor sleep habits alter this crucial ebb and flow, potentially causing dangerous blood sugar levels that can lead to type 2 diabetes.

This finding offers many great potential avenues to explore, and Nivedita’s work has a practical application right now.

“We definitely need to keep in mind the time of day we take our drugs to ensure optimal effect,” she says.

As for Nivedita, she continues to sleep well and focus on her research because what she wants to do, and what she does, has never gone out of synch.

Meet the other new faces of innovation and discovery. 

We asked Slipski to share his ‘Top Five’ for this new UM Today column. Here are his top five every day things we most often do that contribute to antimicrobial resistance.

1. Eat meat products raised with antimicrobials. – 80% of all antimicrobial usage in Canada is in farming and livestock, due to the exposure to antimicrobials from birth, many of the bacterial organisms that colonize these animals end up acquiring resistance genes to those antimicrobials used. By eating these products we too can acquire resistance genes so that the bacteria that colonize us can gain resistance and this can become a problem when we acquire pathogenic infections that require antimicrobial treatment, as the saying goes “we are what we eat”.

2. Abuse therapeutic antimicrobials such as antibiotics. We have all had a tickle in our throat or felt under the weather and have had to go to the doctors office. Many times our infections are viral, which antibiotics have no efficacy in treating, and doctors still have no easy way to tell if an infection is bacterial or viral, so many times antibiotics are demanded or prescribed unnecessarily. Also, when patients are prescribed antibiotics for a specific period of time, they stop taking them early when they feel better, but it is very important to finish the full course of treatment as given by doctors as these are specific to each drug/patient and are required to eliminate infection. When a course of antibiotics is stopped early a few of the infecting bacteria can remain and come back stronger with a newly acquired resistance to that antimicrobial drug making it far more difficult to treat now.

3. Buy and use handsoap containing added antimicrobials. Hand washing is a very important practice in reducing the spread of infections, especially during cold/flu season, but companies who make soap have taken advantage of this practice, and in order to get an edge over competition and to make people feel even more sanitary they add antimicrobial compounds so they can proclaim “kills 99.99% of germs” or “antibacterial/antimicrobial” on their labels. The truth is these antimicrobial compounds have no added benefit in hand soap, but also have no effect on viruses, and plain old soap is extremely effective at removing bacteria and virus from your hands without added chemicals. The more we add these unnecessary compounds to our soaps the more we expose bacteria to them and help them acquire even more resistance to these antimicrobials making them ineffective for when we really need them. The FDA in the United States recognized this fact and banned several antimicrobials including Triclosan from hand soap, but in Canada we are still far behind, and continue to allow these antimicrobials to be added to our soap products. Alcohol hand sanitizers are a great alternative to antimicrobial hand soaps, and do not add to the burden of antimicrobial resistance.

4. Buy and use household cleaners containing added antimicrobials. Another area where antimicrobial compounds have been added with no benefit are in household cleaners. Many of the chemicals we use such as bleach are very effective at killing pathogenic organisms. More recently however, there has been a fear of using “too many chemicals” in our households such as ammonia or bleach driving companies to create “chemical free” or “bleach free” cleaners, which is funny because in place of those chemicals they add even more potent antimicrobial chemicals for the killing action against microorganisms. In this case, the old fashioned cleaners without antimicrobials are safe to use, and just as effective at reducing pathogenic microorganisms in our house, without adding to the burden of antimicrobial resistance.

5. Buy and use everyday products such as makeup and fabric softener containing unnecessary antimicrobials. Manufacturers add antimicrobials to products unnecessarily in order to extend shelf life, but also to make consumers feel safer about the products they are using. Many times, such as in day to day products, these antimicrobials have no added benefit to the consumer, and only serve the company producing them for marketing and longevity of their product. The abuse of antimicrobials in these consumer products drives resistance because microorganisms are constantly being exposed to these compounds on a daily basis, and this drives acquisition of resistance genes, so that in times when we are sick or have an infection certain antimicrobials are no longer effective.

University of Manitoba graduate students are on an unprecedented path to innovation and discovery. Meet the new faces behind the research.

It’s wrong to picture this exploding dot surrounded by anything because nothing exists outside of it. No space. No time.

Theoretical physicist Brad Cownden, 3MT finalist and PhD student in physics and astronomy, works with his advisor, adjunct professor Andrew Frey, to understand these early moments of the universe, especially the plasma created at the beginning.

“My interests in space and astronomy are really what led me to what I study now,” Cownden says. “Starting with the solar system, I kept thinking: what is beyond? In our search to see beyond our galaxy, local group, or supercluster, we are also looking further back in time. At the edge of the observable universe, we see an imprint of the hot, dense plasma that made up the universe 300,000 years after the big bang.”

Large particle accelerators can create plasmas—thick soups made of the innards of protons and neutrons—but we still lack good theories for how they would have behaved, which is important if you want to know how everything around you got there.

Using supercomputers, math, and way-out-there thinking, Cownden is developing a better theory of plasmas by using the holographic principle.

In his research, Cownden imagines a scenario where an easily-solved theory lives inside a sphere, and the hard-to-solve plasma is wrapped around its surface. What’s a theoretical physicist to do? Study the easy part to reveal the difficult part.

In everyday life, holograms are used to encode the information from three dimensions (like that picture of a bird on the back of many credit cards) into only two dimensions.

In physics, the holographic principle stipulates that the information from inside the sphere (three dimensions) must constantly be encoded onto the surface (two dimensions). So Cownden studies how the theory inside the sphere behaves, and uses the holographic principle to translate those results into a description of the plasma.

And the plasma behaves oddly.

Imagine heating a pot of plasma on the stove. Contrary to how a pot of water would boil, a plasma would have some parts that heat up while other parts stay cold.

“The whole thing may never become the same temperature. Pretty weird, right?,” Cownden says. “I’ve always been amazed with how—and why—the universe works the way it does. I hope that my research using the holographic principle will help us better understand the strange behaviour of the early universe.”

Cownden shares his passion in science, math, and computers with inner-city youth through coding camps. There he hopes to spark an interest in in the next generation of stargazers.

Meet the other new faces of innovation and discovery. 

When he was eight years old he opened a microscope on Christmas day. Unenthused, he gave it a try and quickly learned he loved it. Shortly after, he watched the movie Outbreak about a fictional Ebola epidemic.

“From that moment I knew I wanted to work in science, and more specifically in microbiology,” the graduate student and 3MT finalist in Rady Faculty of Health Sciences says.

Slipski, working with his advisors Denice Bay and George Zhanel in the department of medical microbiology and infectious diseases, studies ways we can avoid, or at least curb, bacteria developing resistance to our antimicrobials such as antibiotics.

Since the late 1980s we’ve struggled to find or build new weapons to fight bacterial infections and now bacteria are developing resistance at an alarming rate to the drugs we have due to constant widespread abuse. By 2050, if left unchecked, antibiotic-resistant bacteria will kill 10 million people annually across the globe. For those keeping score, that’s two million more than cancer. If we fail to prevent this future, a small cut could once again lead to death, and elective surgeries will become extinct.

“Antimicrobial resistance does keep me up some nights, especially when I read stories about the first signs of untreatable infections in hospitals that were once easily treatable, such as gonorrhea,” he says.

For 2 billion years, bacteria were the only living organisms on Earth. They developed an impressive array of tools to stay alive, one of which is called an efflux pump. A folded bit of material nestled in the cellular wall of the microbe, it detects with stunning accuracy agents intending to enter its body to kill or maim it. The pump spews it out before any damage is done. Our drugs have to sneak past this system, and if they do, success does not last long because bacteria are really good at “learning” how not to die.

This pump system is what Slipski focuses on. He studies the composition of the bacterium’s cell wall and the pump’s structure to better understand how they work. The goal is to use this knowledge to find exploitable weaknesses in their armours so we can make (in the lab) or find (in nature) new antimicrobials that can evade this defense.

“There are amazing ideas in the pipeline,” Slipski says. “When I hear talks from researchers in my department I feel more at ease knowing that some of the most dedicated and bright minds in the world are working on this problem—not everyone realizes that Winnipeg is a hub for the study of infectious diseases, and that our expertise and resources are world renowned.”

Slipski has received the University of Manitoba Graduate Fellowship award (UMGF), which has allowed him to pursue this important research.

“The stress of finding funding is always the dark cloud that can hang over researcher’s heads, and while science is very expensive, it is also very worthwhile leading to amazing discoveries that can benefit our everyday lives. However, sometimes these benefits can take decades to come to fruition, so it is very difficult to convey the importance of this type of research to investors and donors when many expect to show immediate results from their hard-earned contributions.”

Of course, now that we know the blessings of antimicrobials, it’s clear that any positive result is worth the wait.

Meet the other new faces of innovation and discovery.