César de la Fuente, a Ph.D. graduate (2014) and Postdoctoral Fellow (2015) from the Hancock lab, has been awarded the 2021 CSM Thermo Fisher Scientific Award, which recognizes new researchers in the microbiological sciences! “It is an honor, particularly given the caliber of individuals that have been previously recognized. I am truly humbled,” says de la Fuente. “This recognition means a lot to me, particularly in a year that has been dominated by a microbe, emphasizing the importance of microbiology research to improve our world.... Read More
News
Tuesday, June 8, 2021
By Dr. Moritz Koch, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Hallam Lab Climate change represents potentially the biggest environmental threat to human kind since our existence. Still, our chemical industry relies mostly on the usage of fossil resources for the production of various products, such as plastics, chemicals, or fuels. In my work with microalgae, we describe an alternative process that sequesters CO2 from the atmosphere and allows a carbon-neutral production of all these products. This could allow us to transform our industry: away from... Read More
Tuesday, May 18, 2021
“It feels awesome to start a new project in a new place with this kind of momentum. It’s a really special kind of welcome and motivation,” shares Jen Nguyen, a postdoc who joined Carolina Tropini’s lab in January 2021. Nguyen recently received the Killam Award Fellowship for her postdoctoral research and is very excited about her placement in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. “I'm indebted to mentors who have believed in and advocated for me, and in doing so, taught me how to do that for myself. Carolina also has ... Read More
Monday, May 17, 2021
A new anti-viral drug could improve COVID-19 outcomes and survival rates — and is highly effective against multiple variants — according to a new study led by researchers at the University of British Columbia and Université de Sherbrooke. The drug, called N-0385, blocks the SARS-CoV-2 virus from entering human cells through its favoured cell gateways. The results of the study are under review for publication in a scientific journal and have been uploaded as a preprint. “In this study, we report a novel and highly potent small-molecule drug called N-... Read More
Monday, May 10, 2021
Dr. Yi Song, a postdoc in the Haney lab at UBC, is interested in how plants recruit beneficial microbes to protect them from both pathogens and environmental stress. If you sense a pathogen, can you recruit beneficial bacteria to help protect against those pathogens? It turns out, plants can. The Haney Lab, a research lab in the UBC Department of Microbiology and Immunology, has published a paper in Nature Plants with trainee support from the Michael Smith Laboratories called “FERONIA restricts Pseudomonas in the rhizosphere microbiome... Read More