Helminthology Graduate Course

A month has now passed since the close of the Fall Semester or Michaelmas Term, depending upon your vernacular. Over the last four months I coordinated three courses: Genetics & Molecular Biology, part of the DMV undergraduate programme. Advanced Topics in Microbiomes, a graduate course in the Veterinary Medical Sciences (VMS) programme. Helminthology, another graduate …

Voluminous Veterinary Medical Sciences

Within the Veterinary Medical Sciences graduate program we are aware of the broad range of research undertaken by students with an even more extensive range of backgrounds (e.g. DVMs, biomedical sciences, ecologists and policy). I carried out my PhD studies in the now defunct Institute of Cell, Animal and Population Biology, part of the University of …

Parasites @ Calgary Science Cafe

On the evening of May 28th, almost 100 members of the public and a smattering of UofC students crammed into the back room of the Ironwood Grill, Inglewood, to hear about parasites. Dr Patrick Hanington, of the University of Alberta's School of Public Health and UCVM's Dr John Gilleard, were the guest speakers at a …

Lab expansion

At the beginning of September, I took delivery of three new, bright-eyed and bushy tailed graduate students. Dave Curran recently completed his MSc here in Calgary. Dave's working on gene family evolution in parasites. Keyu Li is new to Canada, having completed her BSc at China's Agricultural University. She's building on Ivan Kryukov's summer project …

NSERC CREATE programme

Over the summer seven faculty here at the University of Calgary discovered that we'd been awarded one of the prestigious NSERC CREATE programmes. Worth a wee bit under $2million, we are charged with setting up a graduate training programme in host-parasite interactions. In addition to the Calgary based stake-holders (see below) the programme involves a number …