Sarah Chauvin won a prestigious NSERC Undergraduate Summer Research Award (USRA) to work in the Bowdish lab this summer. Fiona Whelan (MSc candidate) won “best poster” at a CREST meeting (Current research in Engineering, Science & Technology) hosted by the WISE initiative and Alicja Puchta (PhD candidate) won a travel scholarship to attend a recent Keystone meeting (Immunity in the Respiratory Tract: Challenges of the Lung Environment). Way to go Team!
Author Archives: Dr. Dawn M. E. Bowdish
No longer accepting applications for summer students/thesis students for the Fall 2011/Winter2010 year
All summer student and thesis student positions for the upcoming year have been filled. Also please note that we do not accept volunteers for the summer semester.
Dawn & the Bowdish lab’s work featured on “At Guelph” magazine
Dawn, a University of Guelph graduate, will be returning to her alma mater to give a talk on “Mechanisms of Immune Control of Streptococcus pneumoniae in the Upper Respiratory Tract” on Jan. 14 at 11 a.m. in OVC Pathobiology, Room 1810. For a short synopsis of our work see link to article here.
Bowdish lab will accept Biochem3A03/Health Science3H03 students this summer. (Positions filled as of Feb 6 2011)
The Bowdish lab has two positions for six week course students (e.g. Biochem 3A03/Health Science 3H03 or other disciplines). These positions are designed for students who are considering a 4th year thesis project but want to have the advantage of full time immersion in the lab during the summer. We have two projects available, one on the role of monocytes/macrophages in host defence against Streptococcus pneumoniae and the other on the discovery of novel signalling motifs in the macrophage scavenger receptors. Students will be required to write a 1 page outline of their research goals at the beginning of their project, to meet daily with their bench supervisor and bi-weekly with Dr. Bowdish and to write a 4-5 page report on their research project in a journal format and will be graded on these written reports in addition to their progress at the bench. Students are strongly encouraged to have WHMIS, Fire Safety and BSL2 safety training prior to commencing their project. If you are interested, please see our FAQ page for requirements and if you are qualified, please contact Dr. Bowdish directly.
Congratulations Bowdish lab students on awards won at the IIRF!
The Bowdish lab attended the University of Western Ontario’s Infection & Immunity Research Forum. Alicja Puchta had her abstract chosen for an oral presentation, which was very well received. Fiona Whelan, Zhongyuan Tu and Sarah Chauvin presented a poster that one the Biorad award for the best graduate poster for students in their degree program less than 6 months and Mike Dorrington and Alex Jiang won the e-bioscience award, again for the best poster for students in their degree program for less than 6 months. Fabulous start to grad school, team!
Bowdish lab attends IIDR Trainee Day
McMaster’s Institute for Infectious Disease Research hosted it’s annual Trainee Day to highlight the brilliant work of our trainees. The Bowdish lab attended and presented three posters.
Alex explaining his poster…
http://iidr.mcmaster.ca/images/IIDR%20Trainee%20Day%202010/target37.html
Dawn learning what her students are up to…
http://iidr.mcmaster.ca/images/IIDR%20Trainee%20Day%202010/target40.html
Alicja & Mike’s posters….
http://iidr.mcmaster.ca/images/IIDR%20Trainee%20Day%202010/target31.html
For more photos, see here..
http://iidr.mcmaster.ca/images/IIDR%20Trainee%20Day%202010/index.html
Dawn to talk at the SLB/IIES meeting October 7-9 in Vancouver
Dawn will be presenting a talk entitled “Immunosenescent macrophages cannot control Streptococcus pneumoniae colonization” 9:45 am Oct 7th and poster entitled the same at 11-12 Oct 8th. For the rest of the program click here.
The Bowdish lab welcomes Chris Verschoor, Fiona Whelan, Mike Dorrington & Tanja Thurn.
The Bowdish lab is undergoing massive expansion at the moment & we’re thrilled to welcome our new post-doc, Chris Verschoor. Chris recently graduated with a PhD from Guelph and since Guelph trains the best students, we were happy to scoop him up. (Full disclosure: Dawn graduated from Guelph).
Fiona is a MSc student with a computer science degree from Waterloo, who will be bringing her bioinformatic skills to the wet lab.
Mike is also a MSc student who has recently graduated from beautiful UBC (Full disclosure: Dawn did her PhD there & dreams of going back), spent a month in Ecuador & is now hard at work.
In other graduate student news, Zhongyuan Tu, the first member of the Bowdish lab and former thesis student is now a MSc student. We’re delighted that he’s chosen to stay on.
Tanja Thurn brings years of experience as a medical technologist to the Bowdish lab & she will be tackling some of our technology issues and will be a resource to all.
Welcome to all the new members of our team!
Grant Bonanza!
The Bowdish lab has received funding from the CIHR (Pilot Projects in Aging) with Dr. Jennie Johnstone to study how macrophage immunosenescence contributes to susceptibility to pneumonia in the elderly. We have also received funding from the Ontario Thoracic Society/Ontario Lung Association for our work on the role of scavenger receptors in mycobacterial infection and funding from the CIHR (Emerging Team: Human Microbiome, with Drs Mike Surette, Jennie Johnstone, Mike Schryvers, & James Kellner) to study the role of commensal bacteria (including close cousins of S. pneumoniae) contribute to upper respiratory tract infections. This is truly an exciting time for the Bowdish lab – stay tuned for some fantastic science!
Dawn receives funding from the Ontario Research Funding – Research Infrastructure
This morning Ted McMeekin, MPP for Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale, Patrick Deane, president of McMaster, and Mo Elbestawi, the University’s vice-president, Research & International Affairs announced that McMaster University researchers, including Dr. Bowdish were successful in their applications for research infrastructure funding from the Ontario government.
The funding that Dawn has received will be used to expand and support her lab’s research into discovering novel immunomodulatory therapies for infectious disease that will be essential for combatting antibiotic resistant bacteria.
For the McMaster Daily News article click here.
For a description of the project click here.