STEM Speaker Series

Dr. John Shen is currently a professor and director of School of Mechatronic Systems Engineering at Simon Fraser University, Canada. He received his BSEE from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China in 1987, MSEE and PhD in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA in 1991 and 1994, respectively. He has 34 years of academic, industrial, and entrepreneurial experience in the field of power electronics and power semiconductor devices and ICs. He has authored or co-authored over 350 publications and 20 issued U.S. patents. He served the IEEE Power Electronics Society (PELS) in various capacities including Vice President of Products, Chair of PELS Distinguished Lecturers Program, Guest Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transaction on Power Electronics and IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics, General Chair of the 8th IEEE Energy Convergence Congress and Expo (ECCE2016) and of the 30th IEEE International Symposium on Power Semiconductor Devices and ICs (ISPSD2018), two flagship IEEE conferences in the field. He is a Recipient of the 2012 IEEE Region 3 Outstanding Engineer Award and the 2023 IEEE Power Electronic Society (PELS) Technical Achievement Award for Integration and Miniaturization of Switching Power Converters. He is a Fellow of IEEE and the U.S. National Academy of Inventors. He currently serves on the board of directors of Vicor Corporation (NASDAQ: VICR).

Phung Ta is a medical laboratory technician at Kingston Health Sciences Centre, where she conducts a wide variety of clinical diagnostic tests on patient samples. She holds a bachelor's degree in Biochemistry from Trent University and a master's degree in Biomedical Engineering from Queen's University, both of which were funded by prestigious, full-ride scholarships.

Dr. Valentina Marchetti obtained her PhD in experimental physiopathology at the University of Rome, Italy, studying the role of endothelial cell dysfunction and endothelial progenitor cells in cardiovascular diseases such as diabetes type 2, atherosclerosis and obesity. She subsequently moved to USA where she spent 5 years as post-doctoral fellow at The Scripps Research Institute, studying the usage of stem cells and myeloid cells for treating diabetic retinopathies and neurodegenerative diseases of the eye. In the last 8 years she have been working in an industry environment, at STEMCELL Technologies, Vancouver, Canada, where leading an endothelial-eye group, became responsible of establishing, validating and developing products for supporting endothelial stem cell biology research. She recently accepted a position as Adjunct Professor at Simon Fraser University, where she will collaborate with several groups of the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry in the Faculty of Science at Simon Fraser University.

Florian Krauthan is an engineering manager at FISPAN, a local financial technology company in Vancouver. He enjoys learning new programming languages and building open-source, practical tools in his spare time. Florian also holds a private pilot license and has recently started working on tools to assist pilots in flight planning.

Evelynn Yap completed her Bachelor of Nursing from Trent University and has been a registered nurse for seven years. She specializes in critical care, which is a demanding field of nursing that involves caring for patients who are seriously injured or face life-threatening diseases. Evelynn’s diverse expertise also spans across working in different hospital units, including long-term care, mental health, and emergency. Additionally, she has experience working at health centers serving rural communities in El Paraíso, Honduras and Nunavut, Canada. In her spare time, Evelynn enjoys building and collecting Lego.

Dr. Rahul Singh is passionate about advancing inventions and innovation to solve real-world challenges for our communities and the planet for mitigation and adaptation to climate change. For over 15 years, he has worked closely with the agriculture, agri-food and natural resources sectors, including forestry and mining, to support technology translation and commercialization via non-dilutive funding opportunities. Rahul joined BCCAI in 2023 to support small and medium enterprises adopting innovative agritech to advance their businesses, diversify revenue streams and address challenges due to the changing climate. He enjoys discussing cutting-edge science, engineering, and biotechnology and their social, economic, ethical and environmental impacts. Before joining SFU, he worked at Genome BC, UBC, and internationally in France and India. Rahul holds a PhD in Microbiology, a graduate certificate in invention 2 Innovation from SFU-Beedie and a mini-MBA from UBC-Sauder.

Dr. Elaine Humphrey was trained as a Biological Oceanographer and works in the Advanced Microscopy Facility at the University of Victoria. Marine biology is still cool, but electron microscopy is awesome! Elaine was recognized as a fellow of the Microscopy Society of America in 2018 for her contributions to the advancement of the field of microscopy and micro-analysis over the past 34 years. Elaine’s work on microscopy has reached beyond the scientific community. The wildly popular science-fiction television show The X-Files featured her bug images in the series. Five children’s books also include her stereo SEM images. She had a small feature on @Discovery Canada called Small Wonders. She contributes regularly with an Up Close Picture Puzzle to a CBC Radio Program North by Northwest Facebook page.

Justine Hansen is a graduate student at McGill University in the Network Neuroscience lab. She studies how different spatial scales interact in the brain: from molecular mechanisms to dynamics to cognition. Justine relies on open-source data and software to conduct most of her data analysis and is also a proponent of open-science.

Jawad Sakarchi is a PhD Candidate at the University of British Columbia in the department of Zoology. He researches how competition may create or prevent new species from emerging. He does this by incorporating math, competition theory, and the cutting edge of experimental design in ecology. Using this, he quantifies the intensity of competition and coexistence on a scale not done before and uncovers patterns of how separate populations evolve ecologically on their trajectory to become separate species.

Jeff Rusk is a Program Director at IBM Security and Site Lead for IBM's Fredericton, New Brunswick Location.  Originally a senior software developer with Q1 Labs (the start-up that created the QRadar product), Jeff joined IBM when this company was acquired in 2012, bringing to IBM a key security product, with its commanding marketshare, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) space.  His current leadership role focuses on integrating IBM's flagship security products with the wide range of other security services, appliances, and other products in the larger security ecosystem.  His recent research interests are focused on automatic security event categorization using machine learning.

Dr. Malcolm Steinberg is the Director of Public Health Programs in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University where he is an Associate Professor. He has experience in research programme management, health strategy, policy and programme development and evaluation, primary health care and chronic disease management, public health consulting in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, and public health teaching. Dr. Steinberg is the Director of the Masters in Public Health training program where he supports preparing students for public health practice. Dr. Steinberg’s research interests are in exploring and reclaiming Indigenous medicine practices and supporting collaboration between Indigenous healers and the western medical system. He pursues these interests in BC and South Africa where he has an adjunct appointment with the Traditional Medicine Unit in the School of Public Health at the University of Kwazulu-Natal.

Paige Tuttosi is a Ph.D. student in the School of Computing Science at SFU. Her current research interests are human computer/human robot interaction, technology aided language learning and general social good uses for AI. Before all of this, Paige used to be a physical anthropologist and studied Asian religion, then she turned to statistics and computer engineering and dabbled in French the whole way through. When Paige is not studying, TAing or working too many RAships she likes to ski, dance ballet, compete in agility with her dogs and play around with FPGA boards. Website: https://chocobearz.github.io/

Nima is a developer advocate and software engineer based in Vancouver, Canada. These days, they work on all kinds of funky machine learning things for the Society & Ethics folks over at Hugging Face! They have a B.Sc. in Computing Science from SFU, with a minor in Curriculum and Instruction. They love work that blends their interests in technology ethics, education, and social justice. Previously, they were a Machine Learning Software Engineer at Borealis AI, an educator at a bootcamp and a non-profit, and a contractor for various local start-ups.

Molly McVey, Ph.D., P.Eng. is a teaching faculty member in the School of Sustainable Energy Engineering at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC. She teaches undergraduate courses on the engineering design process, engineering graphics, numerical analysis, environmental life cycle assessment, and will soon be adding the capstone design courses. Prior to this role, she was a post-doctoral teaching fellow at the University of Kansas School of Engineering where she worked with faculty across the School to incorporate evidence-based and student-centered teaching methods in over 17 engineering courses. She also has a passion for the development of engineering identity and feelings of belonging in students and in investigating the impacts of course and program-level changes on student learning and retention, specifically for students from diverse backgrounds. Molly lives with her three boys (ages 12, 9, and 7) in North Vancouver and enjoys running the epic mountain trails in her backyard, skiing, and shuffling kids to activities!

Elicia Yap graduated from Trent University with a bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology with a specialization in health sciences. She also completed her master’s degree in Dr. Robert Huber’s lab at Trent University. Her research revolves around studying the role of one of the causative proteins, Mfsd8 (major facilitator superfamily domain 8), in a rare form of neurodegenerative disease, known as Batten disease, using the microbe Dictyostelium discoideum (a.k.a. slime mold) as a model.

Neha Sharma is a PhD candidate at SFU School of Computing Science. Her research interests revolve around multimedia networking, computer vision and machine learning. Neha's current work focuses on hyperspectral imaging using deep learning models for mobile applications. She enjoys travelling to different places with family and friends. In her free time, she loves to paint and watch movies.

James Topham completed his undergraduate degree in Biology at SFU. He went on to pursue his master's degree in Bioinformatics at UBC and was supervised by Dr. Marco Marra who is the Director and Distinguished Scientist at Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre. In his current role, James works as a bioinformatician at Pancreas Centre BC where he uses computational approaches to study the genomic landscapes of various cancers to improve existing therapeutic treatments.

Catherine Chow is a Chemistry instructor and Educational Consultant at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. She completed her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees at UBC in organometallic chemistry under the direction of Prof. Peter Legzdins. Her research at UBC focused on the development of systems for catalytic C-H activation. Before she became a chemistry instructor, she did research at CPE Lyon (France) and BASF SE (Germany). She is always learning about the best ways to guide students in their learning.

Babanpreet Singh is a third year Computing Science student at Simon Fraser University. He is interested in Artificial Intelligence (Image processing) and is completing his program at the university. Also, he has worked with BGC to make a product tracking application that is being used by the company's customers. Besides CS, Baban loves to do photography in his spare time.

Professor Rogério de Sousa obtained his B.Sc. in Physics at Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil, and then moved to the USA to pursue a Ph.D. in physics and quantum computing at the University of Maryland. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Departments of Chemistry and Physics at University of California, Berkeley, and moved to Canada in 2007 to become a Professor in the Dept. of Physics and Astronomy at University of Victoria. His research group focuses on how to design quantum computing hardware and software with less noise. They are implementing quantum algorithms in the current generation of noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices, and developing methods to benchmark as well as mitigate the impact of noise in them. Prof. de Sousa is also interested in making quantum theory more accessible to people with different expertise. At UVic he teaches the course "Introductory Quantum Computing", targeted at second-year science and engineering students with no previous exposure to quantum theory.

*You can access Dr. de Sousa’s slides here or visit his personal webpage.

Dr. Weina Jin is a second year Ph.D. student working with Prof. Ghassan Hamarneh in the Medical Image Analysis Lab. Her research is on developing physician-centered explainable artificial intelligence for clinical decision-support. Weina holds a Doctor of Medicine degree and received residency training in Neurology.

Pawel Kudzia is a PhD Candidate in Engineering Science at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. He currently works on developing experiments to help us better understand how our body controls the forces beneath our feet when we walk/run. Prior to pursuing his PhD, he worked as an engineering researcher at Harvard University where he was part of a team that built wearable exoskeleton robots to help people regain the ability to walk after a stroke. He is excited to talk about robots, sports science, and physiology. In his spare time, he likes to ski mountaineer, trail run, and mountain bike.

Justine Hansen is a graduate student at McGill University in the Network Neuroscience lab. She studies how different spatial scales interact in the brain: from molecular mechanisms to dynamics to cognition. Justine relies on open-source data and software to conduct most of her data analysis and is also a proponent of open-science.

Hazem El-Megharbel is a fourth year undergraduate student at SFU, studying Computer Science and Mathematics. He is particularly interested in cryptography and it’s vast real life applications. He is also very interested in data science and data analysis.

Dr. Igor Shinkar is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University. He obtained his PhD from Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, and was a postdoc in NYU and UC Berkeley. For his research he is broadly interested in theoretical computer science, discrete mathematics, and probability. He is especially interested in Computational Complexity and Sublinear Time Algorithms.

Dr. Woo Soo Kim is an Associate Professor in the School of Mechatronic Systems Engineering. He graduated from Yonsei University and KAIST for his BSc and PhD. And completed his Postdoc research at MIT, USA. After coming to Canada, he worked in Xerox Research Centre of Canada for about 2 years right before becoming a faculty position in Simon Fraser University in 2010. His expertise is on the advanced 3D printing and additive manufacturing technologies and their applications for 3D integrated devices.

Sreeparna Vappala is a final year Ph.D. candidate working in Kizhakkedathu lab, Centre for Blood Research, University of British Columbia. Her research is on developing new drugs to prevent blood clotting without the side effect of bleeding. Besides research, Sreeparna is involved in science communication and science outreach activities. During her spare time, she enjoys running and hiking mountains.

Dr. Brian Fraser is a senior lecturer in the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University (in Surrey). Dr. Brian earned his Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence from SFU and worked in industry as a software developer for 10 years. Brian loves teaching because he can help students learn to create software which makes people's lives better. One such project his students have worked on is creating a health care referral system for use in refugee settlements. Dr. Brian enjoys seeing students being excited about learning.

James Topham completed his undergraduate degree in Biology at SFU. He went on to pursue his master's degree in Bioinformatics at UBC and was supervised by Dr. Marco Marra who is the Director and Distinguished Scientist at Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre. In his current role, James works as a bioinformatician at Pancreas Centre BC where he uses computational approaches to study the genomic landscapes of various cancers to improve existing therapeutic treatments.

Elicia Yap graduated from Trent University with a bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology with a specialization in health sciences. She is currently a graduate student in Dr. Robert Huber’s lab at Trent University. Her research revolves around studying the role of one of the causative proteins, Mfsd8 (major facilitator superfamily domain 8), in a rare form of neurodegenerative disease, known as Batten disease, using the microbe Dictyostelium discoideum (a.k.a. slime mold) as a model.

Dr. Igor Shinkar is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University. He obtained his PhD from Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, and was a postdoc in NYU and UC Berkeley. For his research he is broadly interested in theoretical computer science, discrete mathematics, and probability. He is especially interested in Computational Complexity and Sublinear Time Algorithms.

Dr. Brian Fraser is a senior lecturer in the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University (in Surrey). He earned his Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence from SFU and worked in industry as a software developer for 10 years. Dr. Brian loves teaching because he can help students learn to create software which makes people's lives better. One such project his students have worked on is creating a health care referral system for use in refugee settlements. Dr. Brian enjoys seeing students being excited about learning and his talk will focus on the area of software engineering, which involves the application of computer science and engineering principles to the development of software.

Dr. Gail Anderson is a Professor at SFU, Co-Director of the Centre for Forensic Research and holds a Burnaby Mountain Endowed Professorship. Since 1988, she has been a forensic entomology consultant to police, SPCA and Wildlife Enforcement and has testified as an expert witness many times. Anderson was a recipient of Canada’s Top 40 under 40 Award, the YWCA Women of Distinction Award, the SFU Outstanding Alumni Award, the CSFS Derome Award for “outstanding contributions to the field of forensic science”, the Dean’s Medal for Academic Excellence and the AAFS, Path/Bio Award for Achievement in the Life Sciences. TIME magazine listed her as one of the top five global innovators in the world, this century, in the field of Criminal Justice in 2001 and as one of the Leaders for the 21st Century in 1999. She was listed as one of the 100 most Influential Women in BC by the Vancouver Sun in 2010, and one of the six most influential scientists in 2015. She has published numerous papers and two books (both in 2nd editions).

My name is Vanessa. I (very) recently earned my Ph.D. in Biology from Simon Fraser University. I now work with a multi-institutional Marine Network Consortium in California as a Postdoctoral Scholar. In my new job, I will be using genomics data from marine organisms to better understand community-level changes driven by environmental changes. One of the aims of the project is to provide government officials with information that could be used to confront climate change. I was born in Peru, and my love for the ocean goes as far back as I can remember. Most of my hobbies are ocean related (SCUBA diving, kayaking, fishing, etc.), but I also like to garden, cook, and go on long walks with my girlfriend.

Kristen Gray is a PhD candidate at SFU who studies molecular biology and bioinformatics. Her work focuses on better understanding bacterial pathogens by studying regions of their genomes that can be transferred to unrelated lineages. Kristen has also been involved in initiatives to foster networking and collaboration among local bioinformaticians, including helping to organize an annual genomics hackathon known as hackseq.

Stephanie Witham is an MPH student at the Faculty of Health Sciences at SFU. She comes from a background in Biology (BSc.) as she always had a curiosity for the natural world and the complexities of it. Stephanie worked as a research assistant for various projects during her time at university and recently had the joy of working with BC Cancer in Data and Analytics and Epidemiology. She is an interdisciplinary enthusiast and appreciate learning and communicating knowledge on our health and environment.

Samiah Alam is a Master’s student at Dalhousie University’s Community Health and Epidemiology Program. Her research project focuses on the global burden of disease in Canada, meaning that she uses large amounts of data to identify trends in health challenges faced by Canadians, which, in turn, guide the planning and implementation of healthcare measures. In her free time, Samiah volunteers as a mentor at Being ME Canada which is a conference that aims to address everyday challenges faced by Muslim women.

Daniel He is a PhD candidate in the Department of Experimental Medicine at UBC. He is based at the Centre for Heart Lung Innovation (St. Paul's Hospital), where he is currently under the supervision of Drs. Scott Tebbutt and Christopher Ryerson. He has previously received a Bachelor of Medical Laboratory Science (UBC) and Master of Science (UBC), and is currently a recipient of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Doctoral Research Award. His current research focus is centered around using data science to identify biomarkers of lung diseases.

Marija Jovanovic has a BSc in Molecular Biology & Biochemistry and Business Administration, Certificate in Genomics, and a MSc in Molecular Biology & Biochemistry, where her research focused on developmental transcriptomics in a model organism. Currently, she works as a Bioinformatician at AbCellera. Her interests include analyzing big biological data.