Award Winners
The Canadian Council of University Biology Chairs (CCUBC) offers several awards each year.
Vanessa Shivnauth
2024 CCUBC Undergraduate Paper Award
Vanessa Shivnauth
Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON.
Support Letter - Vanessa Shivnauth
Vanessa Shivnauth graduated with an Honours Bachelor of Science in Biology with a concentration in Cell and Molecular Biology, Microbiology and Genetics, a minor in Chemistry, and a research specialisation from Wilfrid Laurier University in 2021. She joined the Castroverde lab in 2019, working numerous roles as a volunteer, directed studies student, thesis student, and research assistant over a 2 year span. During her research, Vanessa characterised genes in tomato plants implicated in pathogen response and elevated temperatures. Her research led to the publication “Structural diversity and stress regulation of the plant immunity-associated CALMODULIN-BINDING PROTEIN 60 (CBP60) family of transcription factors in Solanum lycopersicum (tomato)” in 2023 in Functional & Integrative Genomics. Throughout her academic career, she has received several awards including the Mitacs USRA, Hypatia award, and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship. She plans to continue her research in microbiology and plant biology.
Maria Laura Sosa Ponce
2024 CCUBC Graduate Student Research Prize
Maria Laura Sosa Ponce
University of Victoria, Victoria, BC
SIR telomere silencing depends on nuclear envelope lipids and modulates sensitivity to a lysolipid
Maria Laura Sosa Ponce is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology at the University of Victoria, where she studies the effects of aging on DNA repair to better understand why age is the strongest predictor of cancer. She completed her PhD in Biochemistry in Spring 2023 at the University of Calgary. Her passion for science started very young, when her parents got her a light microscope set. She loves learning how the living world works, and feeds her curiosity by conducting fundamental research. Her PhD work sought to understand the relationship
Dr. David Donald Hansen, uCalgary Department of Biological Sciences Head, presenting the award to Dr. Maria Laura Sosa
between shape and function for the nucleus, the organelle where genetic material is stored in the cell. She studied how lipids that make up the border of the nucleus - called the nuclear envelope – can affect the regulation of nuclear content. In her Journal of Cell Biology paper, “SIR telomere silencing depends on nuclear envelope lipids and modulates sensitivity to a lysolipid”, she used baker’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) as a model organism to study the nuclear envelope and telomeres that are held close to the nuclear envelope. Using the antitumor lipid drug edelfosine, she showed that a deformed nucleus has disrupted telomere regulation, leading to changes in gene expression. This work showed that the nuclear envelope is an active player in gene regulation and represents a potential target for future therapies.
Dalal Hanna
2024 CCUBC Science Promotion Prize
Dalal Hanna
Carleton University, Ottawa, ON.
Nomination Letter for Dalal Hanna Carleton University
Nomination Letter for Dalal Hanna University of Guelph
Dr. Dalal Hanna is a professor of conservation science at Carleton University, Canada where she leads the Watershed Stewardship Research Collaborative. As a freshwater ecologist, science communicator, and National Geographic Explorer Dalal works to generate the information and momentum required for society to shift toward more sustainable and equitable living. Her focus in on how freshwaters can best be stewarded to ensure their continued contributions to people’s well-being. She is also the co-founder and director of Riparia, a Canadian Charity that works to created better connections between young women, science and water by bringing youth on free, multi-day, freshwater science expeditions.
Turlough Finan
2024 CCUBC Career Achievement Award
Turlough Finan
McMaster University, Hamilton, ON.
McMaster University Nomination Letter for Dr. Turlough Finan
Turlough Finan recently retired as a Professor of Biology. He obtained a B.Sc and M.Sc in Microbiology at the National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland and PhD in 1981from the Microbiology Department, University of Guelph, Canada. Following a year at the Connaught Research Institute (Toronto) studying the neutralizing antigens of Polio virus he performed postdoctoral studies in the Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Finan joined McMaster in 1985 and taught undergraduate and graduate courses on Microbiology, Molecular Genetics and Environmental Microbiology. He was appointed as Professor in 1995. Research in the Finan lab is funded primarily by NSERC with funding also obtained from Genome Canada. His research focused on understanding fundamental aspects of carbon and phosphate metabolism and symbiotic genes and the multipartite genome of the bacterium Sinorhizobium meliloti and is published in over one hundred peer reviewed articles. Finan was Chair of Biology from 1999-2008 and acting Chair in 2020-21. Finan served on NSERC Grant Selection Committee 1501 from 2008-2012 and 2021-2024.