Annual Research Symposium Brings MBP Together
The fifth annual MBP Symposium was held on Thursday, May 1 and Friday, May 2, 2025 in the Medical Sciences Building and Hart House respectively. This two-day, student-led affair combines the James Lepock Memorial (JLM) Student Research Symposium with the annual Alumni Networking Reception.
Thanks to the organization of our amazing graduate students, the Symposium was successful in bringing MBP faculty and students together to celebrate the accomplishments of our diverse department.
JLM Symposium
This annual event, organized by the Medical Biophysics Graduate Student Association, fosters scientific debate across disciplines, streams and institutes. The JLM commemorates the significant research contributions of Dr. James Lepock, a former MBP faculty member, and provides opportunities for MBP students to present their research in a conference setting.
The day featured a student research showcase in the David Naylor Student Commons of the Medical Sciences Building, consisting of a number of scientific posters. Research posters included most first-year MBP students.
Seminar presentations were delivered in the JJR Macleod Auditorium by lower-year graduate students Tasnim Rahman, Bhavish Verma, Madeline Rapley & Stephanie Liu, and by upper-year graduate students Alejandra Castilla Bolaños, Alaina Giang Bui, Felix Menze & Bianca Oricchio Kirsh.
Presentations and posters were assessed by a group of MBP faculty and postdoc volunteers. In addition, this year's event also featured a 'People's Choice Award', selected by a panel of patient advocates, caregivers, and individuals with lived or living experience with cancer.
Top presenters were recognized with a merit award at the reception following the event. The winners of these awards are as follows:
Top Lower-Year Seminar
- Madeline Rapley (Gluco-CEST MRI for Imaging of Cervical Cancers)
Top Upper-Year Seminar
- Bianca Oricchio Kirsh (Fragment-level Classification of Tumor-derived Cell-free DNA to Measure and Characterize Disease Progression in Liver Cancer)
Research Posters
The top highest-scoring poster abstracts:
- Poster Award 1st : Olivia Drummond Guy (Evaluating PARP Inhibitors for Primary Breast Cancer Prevention)
- Poster Award 2nd: Sadaf Mazhab Jafari (Real-Time Visualization of CD8+ and CD4+ T Cell Dynamics in AML: Insights into Bone Marrow Immunity)
- Poster Award 3rd : Nicholas Kleine (Identifying Essential Regulators of Colorectal Cancer Drug Tolerant Persistor Cell Survival)
People's Choice Awards
- Nathan Symss (Studying Hypoxia-induced Metastasis in Genetically-Engineered Mouse Models of Soft Tissue Sarcoma)
- Jianzhong You (Enable Multi-Abnormality Detection in Computed Tomography from Chest Radiography via Tri-Modal Contrastive Learning)
The event also featured inspirational keynote addresses delivered by:
- Dr. Mark Chiew, Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Computational Biomedical Imaging and an Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto.
- Dr. Cindi Morshead, tenured Professor and Chair of the Division of Anatomy in the Department of Surgery at the University of Toronto.
Alumni Networking Reception
The MBP Alumni Networking Reception, organized by the MBP Career Development Association and hosted at Hart House on May 2, allowed MBP students to explore various career paths through presentations by career professionals and a networking session featuring a number of MBP alumni.
The Alumni Reception included Keynote speaker Dr. Alexandra Rink, board certified Medical Physicist at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, an Associate Professor in the Departments of Radiation Oncology and Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto and a Clinician Scientist at the Princess Margaret Research Institute.
The networking reception also featured two round-table networking sessions in which students were able to select from a group of alumni to chat with regarding possible career paths.
Round-table session leaders
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Dr. Danielle Croucher
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Dr. Greg Griffin
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Dr. Cory Richman
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Dr. Alexandra Rink
Symposium a Success
It was truly remarkable to come together and celebrate the achievements of this wonderful department. MBP students enjoyed the opportunity to showcase their work, answer questions, engage in lively discussions with colleagues and learn more about possible career paths after the completion of their graduate degrees. Faculty found the event to be an excellent vehicle to mentor students and learn about graduate research being conducted in our extremely diverse department.
The department wishes to thank members of the MBPGSA for the hard work and tireless dedication that went into organizing the MBP Symposium: Alejandra Castilla, Mahsa Farjami, Christabel Faylinn, Elissa Goodbrand, Almas Khan, Christie Lau, Sadaf Mazhab Jafari, Riley McMaster, Lisa Wang, Yuexin Xi and Sylvia Xu. Special thanks to Sasha Main and Victoria Gao from the Outreach Committee.
A huge thanks to the MBP faculty, postdocs and patient advocates who volunteered their time to act as competition judges:
- Abstract judges: Dr. Colleen Bailey, Dr. Ian Connell, Dr. Eno Hysi, Dr. Marianne Koritzinsky, Dr. Jamie Near, Dr Meaghan O’Reilly, Dr. Peter Truong.
- Seminar and poster judges: Dr. Laurie Ailles, Dr. Margarete Akens, Dr. Colleen Bailey, Dr. Mark Chiew, Dr. Ian Connell, Alessandro De Maio, Naimul Hasan, Echo Jing, Dr. Emile Kadalie, Tristan Kenney, Dr. Iacovos Michael, Dr. Jamie Near, Dr. Meaghan O'Reilly, Emily Poulton, Dr. Javier Ruiz Ramírez, Dr. Gregory Schwartz, Dr. Peter Truong, Bruna Viana, Dr. Alex Vitkin, Foram Vyas, Eric Wang, Stephanie White, Quin Xie and Mark Zaidi.
- People's Choice Award judges: Ron Foreman, Mark Haan, Janice Hodgson, Lisa Mina, Bev Moir, James Pereira and Amtull Rehman.
Special thanks to the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Sunnybrook and STEMCELL Technologies for sponsoring the event.
Learn more about the MBPGSA and how MBP students can get involved.