May 2013 news

The big event in May was Convocation as we said goodbye to 19 B.Sc. (Hons.) graduates, 34 B.Sc. graduates, and 20 students from other departments with Minors in Biochemistry.  Tasahil Albishi, Tolulope Ige, Gregory Morrow  and Bimal Tennakoon each received their M.Sc. degree.

Other awardees at Convocation included:
-Sachin Waghmare, who won the University Medal for Academic Excellence in Biochemistry, and Society of Chemical Industry Merit Award (Biochemistry).
 
-Beibei Song, who won the newly minted University Medal for Academic Excellence in Biochemistry (Nutrition) and  the Grace Morgan Prize in Biochemistry (Nutrition).  Previously to this convocation there was only one departmental academic excellence medal, to be given to a student in any Biochemistry program.  Starting with this convocation, there is a medal for each program, as is the practice in other departments.
 
At the department’s annual Convocation Reception on May 29, the following book prizes were given to students:   the Head’s Prize was awarded to Sachin Waghmare, the Brosnan Prize was awarded to Heather Martin and Beibei Song, and the Mookerjea Prize was awarded to Lisa Bacque, Christopher Dominic, Beibei Song, Sachin Waghmare, and Matthew Young. Each of these prizes are awarded for academic excellence as outlined in our awards page.

There’s been a longstanding tradition that each May at our reception the head or deputy head (undergraduate) donates a special prize to the student in 499B (the honours project course) who has their thesis submitted first.  There are usually about 15 – 20 students in the class who are eligible to win.  This year’s winner was Skye Fisher.

At the Employee Service Awards Ceremony on May 16, Dr. Fereidoon Shahidi was recognized for his 25 years of service with Memorial.

We welcomed one new graduate student at the start of the Spring semester.  Brad Feltham joined our M.Sc. program after finishing his B.Sc. (Hons) with us in April. Maaran Suntharamoorthy transferred from our Masters to our PhD program in Food Science on May 1.

Summer student hiring continued into May, with students funded from various programs as well as from supervisor’s research grants.  By the end of May, 20 students were working in research labs for the summer in either part-time or full-time positions.