The CSMB is proud to have supported this student initiative!
Organizing group: Experimental Medicine Graduate Students’ Society (EMGSS)
Location: Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, Montreal QC
Attendance: 96 student presenters (including 10 oral presenters), 22 judges, 1 keynote speaker, and 40-50 unregistered attendees who viewed presentations.
Date: March 21, 2023
Description:
The McGill Biomedical Graduate Conference took root as a small but 100% student-led initiative by the 2000 EMGSS Student Council. Since then, it has ballooned into a vibrant, multidisciplinary conference that brings together biomedical scientists across Montreal and international research sites. The goal that has threaded each of these 23 conferences together is to provide students with a supportive and academically rigorous conference experience for graduate trainees without the inhibitory registration costs that are often associated with academic conferences. This year, we had the pleasure of hosting poster and oral presentations from trainees at the Lady Davis Institute, Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal, Goodman Cancer Research Institute, and the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre. Research topics ranged from Oncology to Genetics to Bioinformatics to Clinical Therapeutics. Our oral presenters gave excellent talks that included exploration of genetic factors driving cancer metastasis, the natural evolution of SARS-COV2, and the role of extracellular vesicles in Major Depressive Disorder, among seven others. A conference highlight included an in-person keynote address from Dr. Samuel Sternberg (Columbia University) whose talk walked us through the discovery and development of CRISPR-associated transposases. EMGSS is proud to have supported and celebrated student excellence in research with $5500 in awards for the best oral and poster presentations. We were able to carry out the entire conference without charging our participants, a feat only made possible by the generous support of our sponsors, including the Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences.
