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News, Awards and Blogs

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Team Highlights
A brief glimpse into our team, as explained by an unreliable narrator...

Eric Jumaga

Unfortunately, 15% of couples are infertile with male factors contributing to 50% of the cases. Meaning there are lots of men that can’t live out their dreams of becoming fathers; this is so sad. Eric, a cellular biomedical engineering student, was tasked with solving this problem by developing a testis-on-a-chip. The chip aimed to bring testicles down to the microscopic level, imagine tiny basketballs but way more scientific. Eric’s co-op began with him learning the basics of cell culture and how tissue engineers work based on their cell’s schedules, not their own. After imaging his cells and perfecting their diet, Eric started working on integrating them into a microfluidic chip. While at the Laboratory of Microtechnologies for Quantitative Biomedicine, Eric was exposed to a very independent and self-directed style of work. He learned life-long skills while prototyping and iterating through many different testis-chip designs. In the end, Eric did not manage to make the dreams of infertile males come true but his work has been a major leap forward in the right direction. Eric would like to thank those whom he worked with while on his co-op, he states “Their support and camaraderie have added a meaningful and personal touch to my co-op journey.”
Eric 1 thumb
Eric 1 thumb

Hood Eric
Hood Eric

Eric Breaking Bad
Eric Breaking Bad

Eric 1 thumb
Eric 1 thumb

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Jack Plant

Jack Plant is a reasonably impressive Biomedical Engineering student at the University of British Columbia. In his limited free time, Jack enjoys hiking, playing guitar, and lamenting over cancer statistics. Driven by these interests (one of them more so than the others), Jack secured an 8-month co-op term with TRIUMF and μQB in May 2023. In this position, Jack focused on developing a microfluidic platform for generating radiopharmaceuticals - highly precise radioactive cancer drugs. These radiopharmaceuticals are specialized weapons that are really good at two things: finding cancer cells and blowing them up. They are essentially guided missiles that hate cancer almost as much as Jack does. Using microfluidics, Jack endeavoured to create a miniaturized factory capable of manufacturing gazillions of these cancer assassins at a time. When Jack first arrived at μQB, he had zero lab skills. Now, 8 months later, he has about 2 or 3 lab skills - a fact that he is very proud of. He also had the chance to visit Waterloo for an undergraduate research conference. This was a fantastic opportunity for learning, networking, and taking in the natural beauty of Ontario’s 4th largest industrial urban region. Though he would never admit it publicly, Jack will miss his time at μQB, and is very grateful for the friends, mentors, and enemies he met along the journey.
Jack thinking
Jack thinking

Jack chip glowing
Jack chip glowing

Jack of hearts
Jack of hearts

Jack thinking
Jack thinking

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Awards

Mentoring students and junior colleagues form a critical component of our research activity.  Snapshots of a few recognitions of our team members are listed below.

Yara Nasrallah

NSERC URSA Award

2024

Ruth Yu

NSERC URSA Award

2024

Amir Reza Ameri

4-year PhD Award

2023

Sofia Graham

Killam Postdoctoral Research Fellowship

2023

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Jack Plant

Student Symposium Best Talk Award

2023

Jack Plant

Canadian Undergraduate Physics Conference Team Poster Presentation Award (3rd Place)

2023

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Anna Fomitcheva Khartchenko

SNSF Post-doc Fellowship at University of California Berkley

2022

Prerit Mathur

CHEMINAS Best Poster Award

2021

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Vesna Bechava

Best Presentation Award

2019

Nadya Ostromohov, Vesna Bechava

CBMS Student Travel Grant

2019

Nadya Ostromohov

Best Poster Award

2019

Nadya Ostromohov

Best Oral Presentation

2017

Julien Cors

Best Poster Award

2014

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Laura Ing

SBME Synergy Award

2024

Govind Kaigala

Analytical Chemistry Young Investigator Award

2023

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Sharvari Somayaji

Otto Bayer Fellowship in Drug Discovery

2023

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Sharvari Somayaji

DAAD PROMOS Award

2023

Jake Pringle

SBME Synergy Best Presentation award

2023

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Daniel Widerker

Best Poster Award

2022

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Vesna Bechava

SNSF Post-doc Fellowship at Cornell University

2022

Anna Fomitcheva Khartchenko, Iago Pereiro

Best Paper Award from the American Institute of Physics

2020

Nadya Ostromohov

Biosensing Poster Award

2019

Daniel Widerker

Daniel Leonard and Diane Sherman Interdisciplinary Graduate School Fellowship for Academic Excellence

2019

Nadya Ostromohov

EMBL Corporate Partnership Program Travel Grant

2018

Deborah Huber

Swiss Chemical Society Travel Award

2016

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Julien Cors

Novartis Bootcamp Award

2014

Brian Ma

WESBROOK Scholar & Carl Bradford ROBERTSON Scholarship

2024

Jake Pringle

SBME Synergy Award

2023

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Vesna Bechava

Schmidt Science Fellow

2023

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Vesna Bechava

Shutakovsky Award (highest recognition to graduate students, with one awardee in PhD and on in Masters each year at the Technion)

2023

Sharvari Somayaji

Mitacs Globalink Research Award

2023

Daniel Widerker

First Prize in Mechanical Engineering Research Day

2022

Vesna Bechava

Best Talk Award

2021

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Vesna Bechava

Best Youngest Scientist Under 30 Years 

2020

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Federico Paratore

Best Poster Award

2019

Federico Paratore

Arthur Shavit Award for Best PhD Thesis

2019

Aditya Kashyap

Helmsley Fellowship at Coldspring Harbor Laboratories for Interdisciplinary Research

2017

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Julien Cors

Best Poster Award

2015

Marios Georgiadis

ETH Gold Medal Award for Best Master’s Thesis

2012

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Blogs
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