Dear Colleagues and BME friends,
Ìý
It is with delight and a touch of pride that I am prefacing our first departmental newsletter. The achievements and successes of our faculty and students merit a wider recognition. These stories and features will help shed light on the incredible diversity of members in our department, on their motivations and aspirations, and help us find out more about the persons who we regularly see and greet, but may not always know more about.
Among the highlights are Rob Kearney’s David Thomson award recognizing his lifelong leadership in graduate supervision, as well as Maryam Tabrizian’s award of a Canada Research Chair. It also features our latest recruit, Danilo Bzdok, who was awarded a CIFA Chair in Artificial Intelligence, and whose research has already made the headlines less than a year after joining the department. I am particularly excited to learn more about the students in our program through this letter, which features Pouya Amiri and Leiso Edwards, and for giving us a window into their motivation and experience at Â鶹AV. The newsletter further showcases the Medtech Talent Accelerator, which is an NSERC-CREATE program aimed at preparing students for the medical devices industry.
The COVID-19 pandemic has turned our lives upside down, and this newsletter is thus timely as it should help bring a human touch at a time when we are deprived of much of our social interactions. BME department members have also responded to the pandemic, and Danilo Bzdok’s work on the social consequences has been featuredÌýin the news in North America and Europe. Two laboratories, Dr. Tabrizian’s and mine are actively working on diagnostic devices, and as I joined calls for rapid diagnostic tests, they have been given a broader platform within Canadian newspapers.
Although I am the one writing the opening, the credit for the newsletter falls on Jesse Ehrlick whoÌýproduced and edited much of the content.
I have noÌýdoubts many will enjoy reading this newsletter as much as I did. We wish this newsletter to be lively and informative, and we believe this will be best achieved by evolving and adapting.ÌýWe are thus encouraging you all to send us your feedback and suggestions for the format and specific stories.
Best wishes,
David