All of us at the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health would like to extend our warmest congratulations to the Graduate Program in Neuroscience class of 2020! Seven trainees are graduating this week and to celebrate, we compiled some of their favourite memories as grad students, as well as a special video from some of the faculty!
Dr. Jill Dosso (PhD)
Supervisor: Dr. Alan Kingstone
Thesis Title: Live social influences on human spatial attention and action
Favourite GPN memory: I have loved my time as a PhD student in the GPN! I am treasuring my lifelong, brilliant friends from the BAR lab and our hundreds of coffees, our long walks around campus when we needed a break from stats, and our conference adventures on new transit systems.
Dr. Chelsie Cadgien (PhD)
Supervisor: Dr. Matt Farrer
Thesis Title: Glutamatergic synapse function in a VPS35 D620N knock-in model of parkinsonism
Favourite GPN memory: My favourite memories of my time in the GPN were all the socials. Particularly the shenanigans at the 2014 program retreat at Nita Lake.
Martin Keung (MSc)
Supervisor: Dr. Brian Kwon
Thesis Title: Characterizing lower urinary tract dysfunction in a porcine model of spinal cord injury
Favourite GPN memory: My favourite memory with the GPN was being able to travel to many different American cities to present my work. The travel awards provided by the GPN made this possible and I am thankful for this.
Dr. Sohrab Manesh (PhD)
Supervisor: Dr. Wolfram Tetzlaff
Thesis Title: The role of oligodendrocyte remyelination in locomotor recovery after traumatic spinal cord injury
Favourite GPN memory: My best memories are from the Neuroscience 500/501 lectures. The sense of comradery and the shenanigans are hard to ever recreate.
Tashana Poblete (MSc)
Supervisor: Dr. Shernaz Bamji
Thesis Title: The role of X-linked intellectual disability-related gene, Zdhhc9, in white matter development
Dr. Jessica Yuen (PhD)
Supervisor: Dr. Alasdair Barr
Thesis Title: Acute cardiometabolic side effects of clozapine in rodents
Favourite GPN memory: My favorite memory would be the time spent with lab mates joking and fooling around in between time points during long experiments. It was extremely satisfying to make someone emit a blood curdling scream at 6 am in the morning after I jumped out from behind a desk.
Dr. Jingyan Zhu (PhD)
Supervisor: Dr. Max Cynader
Thesis Title: Development of peptides targeting TDP-43 and CK-1δ as potential Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration therapies
Favourite GPN memory: I will never forget every time when the grads would get together at pub night to talk about science and real life.
