scientificanada

Organized by: Genome Canada  

Twenty years after the Human Genome Project, genomics is delivering on its promise: a big data science that—combined with AI, gene editing and biomanufacturing—is revolutionizing our wellbeing and economies. The U.K., U.S. and others are launching genomics strategies to maximize impact for their citizens. Canada is doing the same. Budget 2021 announced $400M for a new Pan-Canadian Genomics Strategy to build on the excellence Canada has built in genomics. This session will explore what it will take to build an effective Strategy, opportunities for Canada’s continued leadership in genomics, and the confluence of genomics with other transformational technologies.  

The major takeaways here were our need for our own big database of genomic data that can be used by government, research, industry, etc. The panelists referred to the UK BioBank many times as the best (and only?) example of this, and it’s the consensus that Canada could be the second, if we manage to get our ducks in a row.  

This was an exciting session, basically it kind of felt like a room of very smart people getting handed a huge sum of money, and asking them how to use it to become world leaders in genomics. Probably because that is more or less what it was. I took a bunch of notes, which you can find on scientificanada.ca, but here I will try to summarize a few of the more interesting points I gleaned from the session.

My main takeaway from this session was that “we all want collaborations”. Many have industry-led collaborative approaches. I will say, a lot of the session felt like name-dropping different initiatives and quoting numbers which is probably useful for some, but from my perspective, a lot of that was too in-the-weeds for me. However, there were some interesting questions from the moderator and audience that I’ll highlight, and then get into some odds and ends from the session. Like Japan’s Moonshot Program, whose Step One is focused on Cybernetic Avatars…

Organized by: National Research Council Canada  

The climate crisis cannot be addressed by any single organization, sector, country, or even region. Research in universities and laboratories around the globe must be commercialized if we are to succeed. This panel draws on experts playing a key role in enabling innovation ; Canada, Japan, Norway, Germany and the UK, which are all recognized leaders in climate change related research, innovation and technology. Panelists will present their initiatives addressing climate change, and the role of international partnerships. The session will highlight successes, underline pitfalls, and discuss innovation and commercialization policy approaches that can most effectively address the climate crisis.

In 2019 a federal budget item was announced and $134 million was set aside for what is considered the first-ever FOOD POLICY FOR CANADA. Qualitatively, income disparity and unequal access to affordable, healthful food is a fundamental problem we face. Multiple government departments play a part in ensuring Canadians have access to good food because it’s a complicated issue. But getting a bunch of separate departments to work efficiently toward an amorphous goal like this is probably pretty difficult. So, that is the argument for creating the Food Policy for Canada.

The first pre-conference session at the CSPC2021 was a panel discussion with five members of the Canadian Food Policy Advisory Council who introduced us to the Food Policy for Canada, and presented their opinions on key priorities for the new government, and reflected on barriers to be overcome.

For more, head to www.scientificanada.ca

This week’s random walk is … going to take up the whole episode this week. We have a very special guest this week. Antonia Kowalewski is an undergraduate student studying biophysics at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby British Columbia. This week I talked to her about a summer research project on Multivalent Diffusive Transport that recently was published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry B. She will be presenting the work at the Canadian Undergraduate Physics Conference, but I had a chance to talk to her first. So stay tuned, we will be back with Antonia in just a sec.   

Learn more about Antonia and the Forde Lab below: 

 https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoniakowalewski/ 

https://www.sfu.ca/fordelab/ 

https://cupc.cap.ca/

This week Sawayra talks to Jennifer Williams about her research on Contraception and Cardiovascular Health.   

Follow Jennifer on Twitter @JennySWilliams 

Follow Sawayre on Twitter @Seeingaway  

If you like this, subscribe to the show! You can watch the interview on scientificanada.ca 

Thanks for watching!

Welcome back to The AlmaMAC! This week, Sawayra talks to PhD student and musician Konrad Swierczek about his research into music universality. Why do certain things sound good to us? Do they sound good to other cultures? Let's find out. 

Find Konrad on Twitter @KonradSwierczek !  

Find Sawayra too: @seeingaway !  

We are also at scientificanada.ca  with additional interviews and articles.   

Thanks for watching!

Adam talks to Sawayra about "comps". Thoughts and feelings, tips and tricks, and different styles of exams are the focus of discussion this week. For more, head to scientificanada.ca 

CW: Dr. Chungah Kim is an expert on socio-economic indicators connected with suicide, so some of the discussion may not be for everyone.

The Large Hadron Collider is made up of a bunch of different experiments run by different international collaborations, but it’s all happening on the 27-km loop. All of these experiments are attached to the loop, but at different locations around the loop. This requires a ton of oversight and collaboration between experiments, and to facilitate this, the collider basically needs a governing body to keep everything working smoothly. It’s almost like its own country or something, built within this 27-km loop (about 8.5 km diameter). Actually, it kind of reminds me of Vatican City in a lot of ways. Except about 8 times wider. But the point here, is that being able to run experiments that study the things that make up atoms requires this enormously connected world of collaboration. The science blows me away, and so does the politics.

So why am I telling you all this? Well, today our guest on the AlmaMAC is a Carlton grad student via McMaster who works on this big loop. Ben Davis Purcell is an ex-McMaster student, graduating with a MSC in physics from the same lab I am currently in. Now he works with a group out of Carlton with ties to the Large Hadron Collider. This week I talk to him about looking at the smallest things in the universe and being a part of perhaps the biggest scientific collaboration in the universe. Stay tuned.

This week Adam is back, and he's talking to his officemate, Carmen Lee.  

Carmen talks about some of her new projects, existing in a pandemic, the student she supervised virtually, and a smattering of other topics.   

You can connect with Carmen over Twitter @carmlingling . You can also watch the pod on Youtube! Check out www.scientificanada.ca for more.

This week’s episode is a very special one. For one thing, it’s the triumphant return of Sawayra Owais as host of the AlmaMAC. For another, she speaks to a guest who studies some very important, very timely issues. I’d probably label them as crises really.

Rida is a Masters student at McMaster university. This week Sawayra talks to her about her research which includes assessing science policy decisions from a human rights perspective.

For example: stay at home restrictions and the homeless/unemployed, and child welfare affected by institutional racism.

See www.scientificanada.ca for the full show notes.

Hi hello, and welcome to the show. Today is a particularly special episode of the AlmaMAC. Actually, it’s probably the most Meta episode of the AlmaMAC that we’ve ever had. Today I’m joined by the inventor of the AlmaMAC, the once and future host of the AlmaMAC, Sawayra Owais! This is actually a 2-parter, since we have so much to talk about. Today we are going to talk about the show in general - how did Sawayra come up with it? What is the goal of the show? How has it evolved, etc.

See the full show notes at www.scientificanada.ca !

Hello and welcome to Random walk episode 27. This week you will be hearing from PhD Candidate and science writer Francesco Zangari. Francesco is finishing his PhD on Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto, and recently attended ComSciCon-GTA, a conference on communicating science for researchers local to the Greater Toronto Area. This is another 2-parter, and this week we will be talking a bit about Francesco’s research, competitiveness in science, lab safety with COVID, and social media for communicating science. In part two, we are going to dig more into science writing.

For full show notes, head to https://scientificanada.ca/2020/12/16/rw27/

Welcome back to the show, I’m your host Adam, and this week I am going to be talking to ZiYan Chen about communicating science as a researcher and grad student. But before we get to the interview, I’m excited to announce that as well as being a guest on this episode, ZiYan is one of our very first guest authors on our website, scientificanada.ca . This is a big deal for us! One of my first goals I had with this project was to get to a position where I could start sourcing articles from contributing writers. But I wanted to make sure I did it ethically.   

In a lot of cases, young scientists and science communicators aren’t paid for their work. In a lot of cases, communicating research to the public, writing articles that don’t end up in an academic journal, or doing outreach activities are seen as secondary to “real” research. A lot of aspects of academia seem to operate under the expectation that experts will volunteer their time and expertise. As much as I wanted to get scientificanada to a place where we could start taking articles from contributors, I didn’t want to do it unless these writers could be compensated in something concrete. Like money. And that’s where our Patrons have come in.   

At this point, we are still operating at a loss, considering website hosting, purchasing domains, not to mention the time I spend recording and editing episodes and our site. But over the last year I’ve been putting away contributions from our few but consistent Patrons, and because of them, I’ve been able to start commissioning articles for the website. 

So first, thank you to everyone who has subscribed to our Patreon, I couldn’t do all of this without your support. 

Second, please check out ZiYan Chen’s article, up on scientificanada.ca/articles . She’s written a great piece about attending ComSciCon-GTA, or, the Greater Toronto Area’s first Science Communications conference, including a whole load of take-aways that are super useful for anyone just starting out in “sci-comm”. 

And thirdly, all of this will always be free - the podcasts, the articles, everything - but there is so much more I want to do with this platform. There are so many scientists and researchers with fantastic stories and opinions, and so many different voices that need to be shared, and I want to help get these stories heard. If you want to help us keep doing what we’re doing, and then some, please consider joining our Patreon. As little as 1-dollar per month helps, and with that you will get early access to all of our content, as well as some bonuses every so often.   

Anyway, thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoy my interview with Zi Yan Chen, about attending the GTA’s first ComSciCon.   Oh, and check out Tareq on Instagram at @RCIscience and www.theatlantic.com/projects/planet  ps our website is www.scientificanada.ca . jus' sayin'

Kathryn is back to talk ComSciConCAN2020! We talk about our take-aways from the 2020 edition of ComSciConCAN, a grad-student focused conference on science communication!  

Remember, we have a big write-up about the conference available for free at https://www.patreon.com/scican  

Kathryn Vaillancourt is a PhD candidate at McGill University studying how addiction can change the way traits are passed down, without having to alter the person's genetic code. It's a fascinating (and relatively new) area of research called "epigenetics".

Sarah is back to talk ComSciConCAN2020! We talk about the panels, policy, and new initiatives!  Remember, we have a big write-up about the conference available for free at https://www.patreon.com/posts/scientificanada-40932072  

Sarah Turner studies Community Health Science at the University of Manitoba, focusing on breast milk, epidemiology, and health promotion.  Her work in science communication stems from interest in science policy and advocacy.

And we're back! Last you heard, we were going to ComSciConCAN-2020, and you met some attendees. Now that we're back, you'll hear about the conference from Adam and his previous guests. This week, we start with Tareq! You remember Tareq right?  :)

www.scientificanada.ca

patreon.com/scican

And we're back! Last you heard, we were going to ComSciConCAN-2020, and you met some attendees. Now that we're back, you'll hear about the conference from Adam and his previous guests. This week, we start with Tareq! You remember Tareq right?  :)

THIS WEEK: Kathryn Vaillancourt is a PhD candidate at McGill University studying how addiction can change the way traits are passed down, without having to alter the person's genetic code. It's a fascinating (and relatively new) area of research called "epigenetics", and I wish I had read the wikipedia article before the interview, because it says that, "Due to epigenetics being in the early stages of development as a science and the sensationalism surrounding it in the public media, David Gorski and geneticist Adam Rutherford advised caution against proliferation of false and pseudoscientific conclusions by new age authors who make unfounded suggestions that a person's genes and health can be manipulated by mind control." We also talk about Kathryn's path through academia, an awesome new arts+science podcast she's creating, The Brain Bank that she works at, zines, and a bunch of other fun stuff!   

CHECK OUT: Kathryn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MoleculeMind (@MoleculeMind). Actually, instead of re-typing all of the really cool stuff Kathryn is up to, you should definitely go to her website: https://www.kathrynvaillancourt.com/science-communication . You'll find stuff like a Women in Science Tarot deck she helped create, 97 Neuro-based podcast episodes, a bunch of writing, and lots more!  Kathryn is also working to build a podcast for The Convergence Initiative, a group that's using art to help make neuroscience accessible to everyone. It is SO COOL. Go here: https://www.convergenceinitiative.org/about-us-int  

AMPLIFY: This week instead of amplifying specific voices, I want to shout out this really great movement seemingly started by the (great) blog Astrobites: #BlackInAstro (https://astrobites.org/2020/06/25/blackinastro-black-women-in-astronomy-and-physics/). What started as a week to celebrate black astronomers and astrophysicists has spilled over into other fields. And to my great satisfaction, we are JUST IN TIME to follow @BlackinNeuro (https://twitter.com/BlackInNeuro)! Starting July 27, they will be featuring daily stories of black neuroscientists. In fact, it looks to be spearheaded by one of our favorites, the @FutureDrDukes ! So hurry up and get in there: https://twitter.com/FutureDrDukes/status/1282568056170876928  Also, check out the Society for Black Brain and Behavioral Scientists. This is a group with the goal of supporting black brain and neuro - based scientists. I personally benefit from the privilege of being surrounded by scientists and researchers that look like me. It's hard for white people to really truly appreciate how important that actually is to ones development in a community since we've likely never not felt like we belong. One of SB^3S's big goals is to foster a community and carve space in yet another white-dominated field. Check them out here: https://www.sb3s.org/goals-and-trajectory/   Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to our channel on YouTube , Anchor and our email list at www.scientificanada.ca .