News and events

The Neuroscience Graduate Student Association will use donated funds to provide invaluable learning and social opportunities for its members.

Post-doctoral fellow Dr. Haley Vecchiarelli (Tremblay Lab) received a 2023 Brain Canada Rising Stars Trainee Award for her work focusing on how cannabis exposure alters microglia.

First author and PhD candidate Fernando González Ibáñez (Tremblay Lab), along with fellow Tremblay Lab members, recently published new research showing a ketogenic diet promotes resistance to stress by changing brain lipids and improving microglial health.

Charlotte Copas (Nahirney Lab), Elisa Gonçalves de Andrade (Tremblay Lab), Irene Shkolnikov (Christie Lab), Kaylene Scheil (Caruncho/Kalynchuk Lab) and Patrick Montgomery (Krigolson Lab) recently defended their MSc theses.

Drs. Carla Liria Sánchez-Lafuente (Caruncho / Kalynchuk Lab), Erin Gräfe (Christie Lab), and Hannah Reid (Christie Lab) recently defended their dissertations to earn their PhDs.

PhD student Nicole York (Swayne and Arbour Labs) was named a Vanier Scholar for her research investigating the role of ankyrin-B (ANKB) in heart muscle cell differentiation. This could provide insight into how a variant of ANKB contributes to cardiac conditions prevalent in the Gitxsan First Nations community.

Undergraduate student Lauren Aimoe (Faulkner), who is from the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation and Métis Nation BC, is completing a summer internship with Dr. Brian Christie in the Division of Medical Sciences. Along with gaining some lab-based research experience, Lauren has mainly focused on making the Student Head Injury Neuro Education (SHINE) program more inclusive and accessible for Indigenous students.

Master’s student Haifei You (Swayne Lab) has received a Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to study the molecular mechanisms underlying pannexin 1 movement in neural cells.

Undergraduate student Erin Clouthier, who is from the Métis Nation, wanted to see what the research side of a career in science looks like. She is getting the opportunity to do just that with some hands-on experience in the Christie Lab this summer thanks to the IBRO-CBH Summer Research Internship Awards for Canadian Indigenous Undergraduate Students.

During his two-year fellowship, Dr. Adriano Chaves (Tremblay Lab) will investigate new approaches, centered on microglia, to promote synaptic plasticity and treat depression. Adriano is the second UVic Aspiration 2030 post-doctoral fellow to join the Division. Dr. Crystal Acosta (Christie Lab) began her work on understanding how maternal alcohol and/or cannabis consumption affects prenatal brain development in 2022.