Discover Your Future in Science

Do you have a passion for science but you aren’t sure what you can do with a science degree? If so, consider attending The Discover Your Future in Science series.

Learn valuable information about the careers in science, and our Science Co-op program. UM Career Services will be talking about professional careers in science. Academic advisors and professors will be on hand to talk about degree programs, (both undergraduate and graduate level) and supports available to you. Student group representatives will also be there to share the many ways to get involved the Faculty of Science.

Come discover the many options available for you! 

FREE to attend! Light refreshments will be served.

Register in advance. Space is limited.

Attend one session or all three!

Discover Your Future in Science: Life Sciences
Thursday, Jan. 26, 2022
5:45 PM – 7:30 PM
W230 Duff Roblin Bldg. Register

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Discover Your Future in Science: Math & Computing
Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2022
5:45 PM – 7:30 PM
W230 Duff Roblin Bldg. Register

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Discover Your Future in Science: Physical Sciences
Monday, Feb. 6
5:45 PM – 7:30 PM
W230 Duff Roblin Bldg. Register 

With support from the Frederick Gardner Cottrell Foundation, Prairie iGEM has received a $2,500 grant to help level up their agenda. The team’s current focus is on zebra mussels, one of Manitoba’s invasive species that have now spread into Lake Winnipeg and Lake Manitoba.

The rapid spread of these mollusks can clog water intake systems increasing costs to communities and industries. This includes power generating stations, irrigation systems, water supply facilities, and drinking water infrastructure.

The Prairie iGEM team is working on an innovative approach to controlling zebra mussel populations. They aim to design a bio-based device that dispenses molluscsides specifically targeting zebra mussels after ingestion, allowing the device to remain dormant and only affect a single species instead of other native organisms. They are pursuing a method for zebra mussel detection through changes in water chemistry and recognition of zebra mussel’s internal environment, then determining the best timing for the secretion of the highly specific molluscsides. They are advancing their research in close collaboration with the University of Lausanne iGEM team from Switzerland.

Zebra mussels, an invasive species of fresh water mussels, on the propeller and shaft of a sailing yacht. Stock photo.

Over 250 teams across the globe applied for the Impact Grant, all of whom are considered international leaders in their respective disciplines. 90 teams with ingenious and inventive projects were selected, placing Prairie iGEM in the company of teams from some of the world’s highly esteemed post-secondary institutions including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, (MIT), the University of Helsinki, Tokyo Institute of Technology, and so on.

“This project and the iGEM competition in general is a great example for how leading-edge synthetic biology research in the hand of undergraduates and graduate students paired with their ingenuity can contribute to solving emerging challenges in our communities”, says Dr. Wieden

Prairie iGEM is truly representing the University of Manitoba at the forefront of biology-based research and engineering. The iGEM Foundation envisions a scientific community where breakthroughs in laboratories translate to the world’s most pressing challenges, and Prairie iGEM fits perfectly into this world.

The Impact Grant will support the team’s progress in building their device and moving their project beyond the proof-of-concept stage. The grant will also allow the team to make advancements in stakeholder engagement and in the project’s application phase.

As part of iGEM the UM team of primarily undergraduate researchers will travel in October to the annual Grand Jamboree in Paris to compete with over 300 teams from around the globe for medals, awards, and the grant prize.

About iGEM

The iGEM is a non-profit organization dedicated to facilitating advancements in synthetic biology, education, and competition, and developing an open scientific community and collaboration. The Foundation hosts the annual iGEM Competition, pushing the limits of synthetic biology and its implications on complex challenges around the world. With applications in climate change response, human health enhancement, agricultural production optimization and more, iGEM has carefully selected teams with projects exemplifying what it means to positively impact the entire world by tackling one local problem at a time.

Samar Safi-Harb

The astronomical object known as SS 433 has long been known to house a black hole that is causing blasts of energy to spew out across the Milky Way through jets of highly energetic particles. Considered the first known microquasar, it’s at the centre of what’s left of an exploded star in the constellation Aquila, high up in the summer night sky.

“This fascinating system looks like a beautiful Manatee in space and represents the only known supernova remnant in our Galaxy (out of some 400 such objects) housing a black hole,” says UM astrophysicist Dr. Samar Safi-Harb, Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Extreme Astrophysics and lead author of the paper that includes scientists from Canada, USA, Europe, and South Korea.

Brydyn Mac Intyre

UM team member and grad student Brydyn Mac Intyre helped create a striking colour image of this remarkable astronomical object. The blasts of energy terminate at two “earlobes” glowing at radio wavelengths, carved by jets ploughing through space at a quarter of the speed of light. “The space along the jets path glows brilliantly in high energy x-ray and gamma-ray light tens of light-years away from the black hole, but not visible to the naked eye,” says Mac Intyre.

SS 433 is so powerful astrophysicists have been searching for high-energy gamma-ray radiation from the area. In the late 1990s, Safi-Harb proposed that this system accelerates particles to energies higher than what can be achieved in the most powerful particle accelerators on Earth. It took nearly 20 years for high-energy gamma-ray radiation to be detected; in 2018 researchers at the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory announced the discovery of high-energy TeV (Tera-electron-volts) gamma-rays from the system. However, the site of particle acceleration could not be pinpointed until now.

Kaya Mori

Using the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton satellite and NASA’s NuSTAR satellite, modern orbiting x-ray telescopes, combined with data obtained from NASA’s Chandra x-ray telescope, this team of researchers were able to pinpoint the location of the ‘hardest’ (or highest energy) X-ray emitting region near SS 433, believed to be the onset of the eastern jet emission on large scales.

Dr. Kaya Mori, collaborator and astrophysicist from Columbia University in New York, says this powerful energy source, now believed to accelerate particles to very high energies, is a strong candidate for a cosmic “PeVatron,” a source that is accelerating cosmic rays up to Peta-electron volt energies, or 1,000,000,000,000,000 volts!

“Given the unusual nature of the spectrum and source location, this discovery challenges the theory of particle acceleration and points to injection and re- energization of the SS 433 jets at large distances, nearly 100 light years away from the black hole,” says Safi-Harb.

She adds: “SS 433 teaches us about, and zooms-in on, the rare case of a supernova remnant powered by a black hole, microquasars, ultra-luminous X-ray sources (a growing class of X-ray emitting sources whose nature is being debated) and is a micro-version of an active galaxy!”

Matthew Band

This work involved several students from the University of Manitoba and Columbia University, such as Matthew Band, an undergraduate summer research awardee from UM’s Price Faculty of Engineering, who is a co-author on the paper.

“I didn’t expect my summer work to be apart of something like this, I am thrilled,” he said. “It’s an honour to learn from such great people and be a member of this international collaboration.”

The researchers announced the discovery in a paper accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal, to be shortly presented at the International Symposium on High-Energy Gamma-Ray Astronomy in Barcelona.

Dr. Mark Belmonte, Biological Sciences. Photo credit: Kira Koop.

Mark Belmonte, Professor, Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Manitoba, has been appointed as a member of the Expert Panel on Gene-edited Organisms for Pest Control at the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA), which has been tasked by the federal government and Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency.

As CCA reports:

What are the scientific, bioethical, and regulatory challenges regarding the use of gene-edited organisms and technologies (e.g., CRISPR/Cas9) for pest control?

“Understanding the challenges and potential outcomes of these technologies for pest control is critical to informing debate and discussion about their use and I can’t think of a better group of people to take on this question,” said Eric M. Meslin, PhD, FRSC, FCAHS, President and CEO of the CCA. 

​The Belmonte Lab at the University of Manitoba studies the cellular and molecular functions of plant development and plant pathogenesis. Through innovative research we strive to find new sustainable technologies to improve and protect some of Canada’s most important crops.

Learn more about research in the Belmonte lab. 

Research at the University of Manitoba is partially supported by funding from the Government of Canada Research Support Fund.

Dr. Samar Safi-Harb

Safi-Harb is working with visiting scientist Dr. Gilles Ferrand of Rikagaku Kenkyūjo, the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research in Japan (RIKEN), to study remnants of stellar explosions.

Type Ia supernovae are used by astrophysicists as “standard candles” the term for the “yardstick” astrophysicists use to estimate distances to galaxies in the universe and show that the universe’s expansion is speeding up. These cosmic explosions have been considered standards for measuring faraway celestial objects because of the way they are believed to form and shine.

“Broadly speaking, there are two different types of supernovae,” Safi-Harb explains: explosions that result from the death of massive stars making neutron stars and black holes, and the type Ia supernovae which have been traditionally believed to result from the death of a white dwarf star (the aftermath of sun like stars after they die) in binary systems. “However, exactly how these stars explode is still unclear.”

Recent studies have suggested that the second mechanism has a very interesting variant. If two white dwarf stars orbit one another, a back-to-back detonation can cause one of them to explode as a supernova while the other star survives and escapes at hyper-fast speeds, like a billiard ball. In fact, a few hyper-velocity white dwarfs discovered in 2018 had been suggested to be survivors of such a Type Ia explosion.

In some cases, a supernova may launch a star into space like a billiard ball

This explosion model has been referred to as the `Dynamically Driven, Double-Degenerate, Double-Detonation’ model, or D⁶ in short. Such explosions will form hyper-velocity white dwarfs and may affect how we view the aftermath of Ia explosions that drive galaxy evolution.

Ferrand notes: “This prompts us to revisit previous studies of supernova remnants and highlights the need to use advanced 3D modeling techniques to better understand the mechanisms involved.”

Dr.. Gilles Ferrand

Ferrand and an international team of researchers from Japan, Canada, and France have a paper in the scientific publication Astrophysical Journal, detailing how their modelling of Ia supernova remnant, resulting from a D⁶ explosion, reveals an asymmetry even after thousands of years of evolution. They show that the remnants of these explosions reveal imprints that can be traced by X-ray observations, unlike what’s been commonly believed.

This paper is the first effort using 3D state-of-the-art simulations of a D⁶ type Ia supernova conducted on a supercomputer to model and map the aftermath of the supernova explosion, following its evolution all the way to becoming a mature supernova remnant.

The simulations show that there are some interesting, long-lasting signatures inside the supernova remnant, including a “shadow” or dark patch surrounded by a bright ring, and that the remnants of type Ia explosions are not necessarily symmetric, as commonly believed.

“This is very important as this study presents us with a new way to probe a type Ia supernova mechanism through its remnant,” notes Ferrand.

“Given the emerging diversity of Ia supernovae and their imprints on their remnants, this may require rewriting some textbooks and will drive future observations,” adds Safi-Harb.

PhD candidate Alicia Korpach led the study that looked at how the nocturnal eastern whip-poor-will, (Antrostomus vociferus) interacts with light pollution while making its 4,000-kilometer migration from Manitoba and Eastern Canada to Central America.

Most birds, even if they are diurnal by nature, migrate at night, and it has been well documented that artificial light from cities attract many of them. But the UM team wanted to see what effect light has on a nocturnal species such as the whip-poor-will, a brown bird slightly smaller than a robin that looks like a chunk of tree bark.

The GPS sensor attached to the bird’s back let the team see how the birds diverted course away from light pollution.

By attaching pinkie-tip sized GPS sensors to the birds they saw how individuals diverted course away from light pollution. As the researchers report in the journal Ecography, the birds prefer dark skies and follow meandering paths to stay in this habitat. The metabolic cost these diversions have is not yet known, but the stress is presumed to be unwelcomed.

“Aerial habitat needs to be considered along with terrestrial habitat,” Korpach says. “This is not really a concept that has been taken up, but it is starting to. We need to pay attention to what flying animals need in order migrate. I think making it more of a formal concept, more equivalent to how we look at the landscape and the oceans, would be integrative.”

Migrating birds, in short, need not only conserved land to rest, but also aerial highways for their long flights. Building connectivity routes on land is not a new idea. Animal bridges, like the one in Banff National Park, allow creatures to safely cross over highways to new grazing and hunting areas. There are also bridges designed for crabs and squirrel gliders, and tunnels under roads for many animals, including snakes in Narcisse, MB.

The researchers from UM’s Avian Behaviour and Conservation Laboratory, alongside UM’s Population Ecology and Evolutionary Genetics Group, contend that we need the same effort for birds, which bring us great benefits such as eating lot of insects.

“Whip-poor-will are such an iconic species of summer nights in Canada but are declining steeply,” says Kevin Fraser, associate professor of biological sciences at UM and Korpach’s supervisor. “They are currently listed as Threatened under our federal Species-at-Risk Act. Learning more about what they need to safely journey between Canada and their winter homes in the tropics can help us to better conserve them.”

What are some things we can do to help? The easiest, says Korpach, is to turn off lights, or dim them, especially during spring and fall migration, when large numbers of birds are moving through the area. It may be beneficial too to change the colour of the bulbs, as a prior UM study found different light wavelengths have varying effects on birds. But on a larger scale, cities can adopt bird-friendly light policies, such as the City of Winnipeg’s recent Lights Out Winnipeg Bird-friendly Policy.

As part of the NIH Graduate Partnerships Program (GPP) Individual Partnership, she will be working closely with the National Cancer Institute. The Individual Partnership will welcome Egbert to NIH laboratories and enhance her dissertation research, truly expanding her horizons.

“This partnership is an amazing opportunity for Susan to advance her knowledge and create new professional connections to benefit her research and career,” says Kelley Main, acting dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies.

Egbert’s research focuses on lichens, a symbiotic organism composed of both fungi and algae, and its potential to result in the discovery of a new drug for diseases such as bacterial infections or cancer. Due to the slow growth of lichens, Egbert is using lichen genomes and chemistry profiles to investigate alternative methods of creating the properties that can be used in medicine.

“I’m generally interested in natural products chemistry because of the numerous drugs that came from natural products,” says Egbert. “I’m hoping to find solutions in nature that can help people.” She takes a humble approach to her studies, connecting her research to her appreciation for what the natural world provides for humans.

In the earlier stages of her education, Egbert had initially planned to become a hospital pharmacist but had the opportunity to work with her previous principal investigator, Dr. Khalid El Sayed at University of Louisiana at Monroe. She had already been interested in natural products research and this position only convinced Egbert to delve further into it.

With lichens being generally understudied, Egbert wanted to take on a project that would closely look at this organism as it surprised her that this part of herbal medicine has been overlooked in the past. This gap drew her to Dr. John Sorensen’s lab at UM, where she’s excited to explore this field even further.

“Susan has a collection of lichen sitting on all the windowsills in the lab and is constantly making observations on them to better understand how they behave. She has one of the most passionate interests in lichen natural products that I have seen in a student,” says Dr. Sorensen, professor, department of chemistry.

“The project that Susan will be doing at NIH will allow us to explore the biological activity of lichen natural products in a way that would not be available to us at UM. I am very excited at the possibilities that this new connection represents.  Our overriding hope is that this project leads to some really exciting discoveries about novel bioactive molecules with potential as new therapeutics.”

During her exchange program, Egbert looks forward to getting back into the avenue of more clinical based research.

Egbert explains: “It creates this full circle of starting out with research on lichen secondary metabolite activity towards triple-negative breast cancer, then better understanding lichen biology, and back to testing these metabolites on numerous cancer cell lines.”

Egbert is set to take off for Bethesda and begin her program in the Fall Term of 2022.

The tweet that started it all

Evolutionary biologists Aleeza Gerstein and Colin Garroway (alongside undergraduate student Rebekah Kukurudz) in the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Science eagerly responded to this query. They wanted to put Winnipeg on the map, and now their work is published in the latest edition of the journal Science. The University of Toronto Mississauga-led study shows cities are a powerful force driving the evolution of life across the globe.

The experiment was simple yet grand: In 160 cities across 26 countries, researchers took samples of white clover (Trifolium repens) starting in the middle of a city, and followed a straight line out of the city sampling until well into a rural area, testing each sample for hydrogen cyanide (HCN), an antiherbivore chemical defence that is also produced as a buffer against stresses such as drought. And the researchers found that urban clover typically produces less HCN than rural clover because they have adapted to arid cityscapes with few herbivores.

The findings demonstrate that cities are dramatically transforming environments in ways that alter the evolution of life. And cities—with their manufactured networks of concrete, compact soils and pollution—offer basically the same environment, and so the study found that these urban environments are putting selective pressure on clover across the globe. Such “parallel evolution” is a hallmark of natural selection because it suggests that adaptation proceeds in a repeatable way when populations face similar environments.

“A major question in biology is how predictable is evolution? And this is by far the largest study to ask that, and its answer is it’s predictable to some degree but not 100 per cent because there’s always many variables that influence trajectories” Gerstein says.

Aleeza Gerstein and Colin Garroway outside the Manitoba Legislature Building where they collected clover for the largest evolutionary field project undertaken.

For Gerstein and Garroway the findings tell a story that policymakers should pay attention to. Adaptation is taking place, and cities can be designed in ways that benefit species.

“We are so lucky in Winnipeg,” Gerstein says. “There are green spaces, minimum, every five kilometers through the heart of our city and we do not acknowledge this, take advantage of this, applaud this. And we need to conserve these spaces with every dying breath.”

This study builds on the previous work of Galloway’s lab, which looked at how cities impact species at the population-level when islands of urban greenspaces—which are better than nothing—lead to impoverished and thus fragile gene pools of the creatures residing in them.

“We’re having considerable negative impacts on wild populations. Stuff is happening and this latest study is helping us get a handle of the big picture around the world,” Garroway says.

The Global Urban Evolution Project (GLUE) examined white clover because it is one of the few organisms present in almost every city on Earth, providing a tool to understand how urban environments influence evolution. And for GLUE, this publication is just the beginning. Using the same techniques, collaborators collected more than 110,000 clover samples and have sequenced more than 2,500 clover genomes. It has created a massive dataset that will be studied for years to come, and has provided an invaluable baseline for future evolutionary studies.

Leah Pengelly // Photo: Weston Family Foundation

Master’s student Leah Pengelly in the department of biological sciences is studying the underwater soundscape ecology of the Tallurutiup Imanga National Marine Conservation Area and evaluating the seasonal changes in noise levels from marine mammals, ship traffic and activity, and other environmental components.

Pengelly’s project allows her to foster partnerships with Inuit communities and facilitate knowledge exchange, both key in assessing the health of the Tallurutiup Imanga ecosystem and in bridging the gaps between western and traditional science.

“It’s an amazing achievement and I feel honoured to be a Weston Scholar,” says Pengelly. “This project has been a long time coming. I spent years living in the North thinking about this project, and to finally make it a reality and get the recognition feels incredible.”

Tommy Pontbriand // Photo: Weston Family Foundation

Also a student in the department of biological sciences, Tommy Pontbriand is focusing his master’s thesis on the diet and foraging behaviour of bowhead whales in the eastern Canadian Arctic, studying changes in population dynamics in response to changes in prey availability and accessibility over time.

After the species barely survived the population crash from the whaling industry, its slow recovery is now threatened by the effects of climate change.

Bowhead whales also play a key role in Inuit subsistence and cultural preservation. Certain communities that rely on this resource in the region are at risk of losing access to it. “Understanding the bowhead whale’s foraging ecology would allow us to inform these communities and allow them to adapt in anticipation of changes to come,” Pontbriand adds.

Enooyaq Sudlovenick // Photo: Weston Family Foundation

PhD candidate Enooyaq Sudlovenick from UM’s department of environment and geography is not new to being a Weston Scholar. After completing her Master of Science in veterinary medicine focusing on ringed seal health, also supported by the Weston Family Foundation, she is now embarking on her next project studying Arctic marine mammal health, specializing in beluga whales, through the lens of contaminants, pathological studies, and Inuit knowledge.

All three students are representing the University of Manitoba at the forefront of Canadian research, leading us into the next generation of protecting and preserving the North.

“This recognition is a testament to the amazing work these graduate students are doing at the University of Manitoba,” says Kelley Main, acting dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies.

To be considered as a Weston Scholar in 2022, visit the Weston Family Awards in Northern Research website for more information including eligibility criteria and application deadlines.

The funding supports five multidisciplinary infectious disease modelling networks, that will significantly improve the coordination of infectious disease modelling to help Canada better respond to future public health threats.

Dr. Julien Arino is co-lead of Data Management on the One Health Modelling Network for Emerging Infections (OMNI), led by Huaiping Zhu, York University. OMNI also includes UM researchers, Drs Stephanie Portet and Kang-Ling Liao. The multidisciplinary team was awarded $2.5 million to study the interplay between humans, animals, and the environment, and traces the disease from detection through to early warning, early response, and mitigation of new disease threats.

Dr. Arino is also part of the $3 million Mathematics for Public Health (MfPH) network, led by Vijayakumar Murty, Fields Institute & University of Toronto, which comprises renowned experts who worked on the SARS outbreak (2003), and the $2.5 million Canadian Network for Modelling Infectious Disease (CANMOD), led by Caroline Colijn (Simon Fraser University). Within MfPH, he leads a project on Transport and Importation.”

“These multidisciplinary networks of experts across the country will strengthen Canada’s ability to manage threats from emerging and infectious diseases, protecting all Canadians from current and future pandemics. At the same time, they will help advance Canada’s equity, diversity and inclusion goals through research design and team composition, as well as training the next generation of research leaders.” said the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry  

“Manitoba and the Faculty of Science are excited to be a part this interdisciplinary pan Canadian team and sees this kind of approach as being critical to addressing society’s wicked problems.”  explained, Stefi Baum, Dean of Faculty of Science, University of Manitoba.

Dr. Julien Arino

Professor (mathematics) 

Dr. Arino’s research deals primarily with mathematical population dynamics in epidemiology and ecology, with a focus on modelling population movement. Dr. Arino studies the spatio-temporal spread of infectious diseases, with a focus on the relationship between modern commercial aviation and the fast-global spread of infectious pathogens. Dr. Arino uses modelling and graph analysis to consider the risk of importation of disease to various public health entities. Other areas of interest include the stress imposed on public health systems by the variety of health practices used around the world, for example, the treatment of infections or vaccination schedules and other problems concerning population dynamics in ecology and biology. Dr. Arino is a participant in the Data Science NEXUS multidisciplinary program as well as the VADA (Visual and Automated Disease Analytics) graduate studies program. 

 
Dr. Stéphanie Portet

Professor (mathematics)

Dr. Portet’s research encompasses different domains such as biophysics and mathematical biology. Including models of the organization of networks and assembly of filaments composing networks. Dr. Portet uses deterministic and stochastic dynamical models; mathematical and computational analysis to characterize transient and asymptotic behaviour of models. Dr. Portet’s research specialty is intermediate filament networks.

Dr. Kang-Ling Liao

Assistant Professor (mathematics and biological sciences)

Research interests include mathematical modelling and analysis of medical and biological systems, dynamical systems, delay differential equations, differential equations, and bifurcation theory. Dr. Liao works on mathematical biological problems to understand biological mechanisms, such as G protein signalling pathway, cancer immunoediting modelling, somitogenesis (somite formation and morphology), gene regulation, and evolution in ecology.