Dr. B. Brett Finlay selected as Howard Hughes Medical Institute Holiday Lecturer.
December 6 and 7, 1999
1998
Minisymposium on Antibiotic Resistance, at Vancouver General Hospital
February 26, 1998
Invited Speaker: Ben Schwartz, Chief, Childhood and Vaccine Preventable Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, presented "The challenge of antimicrobial resistance: A multidisciplinary approach."
Local Presenters included:
Diane Roscoe: "Antimicrobial resistance - the clinical-laboratory link"
David Greenberg: "Penicillin-resistant pneumococci in Israel"
David Scheifele: "Penicillin-resistant invasive pneumococci in Canada"
Bob Hancock: "Overcoming antibiotic resistance"
Tony Chow: "Novel approaches to multi-resistant bacterial infections"
Dodie Katzenstein: "Antibiotic resistance education project"
1999
"Cool Microbiology" web page created for students and the public
This web page was initially created to provide resource of interesting information about microbiology and microbial diseases for 2nd year Microbiology students at UBC. This page will be maintained and revised according to students' input, as new material becomes available at UBC and throughout the internet.
An Exploratory Workshop
"Outsmarting the Superbugs: Responding to the Antibiotic Resistance Crisis" was sponsored by the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, with a generous contribution from the UBC Centre for Microbial Diseases Research, educational grants from Leo Pharma Inc., SmithKline Beecham and Zeneca Pharma Inc., and with the cooperation of Children’s & Women’s Health Centre of BC and the UBC Department of Pediatrics.
Location: The Auditorium, G.F. Strong Rehabilitation Centre
Peter Wall Major Thematic Grant awarded
'Pathogenomics - An Innovative Approach in the Study of Infectious Disease'
An interdisciplinary group comprising members of the CMDR and other UBC centres and departments has been awarded a Major Thematic Grant from the Peter Wall Foundation to study 'Pathogenomics' (see the project summary). This project will form the initiation point for further study through the CMDR. Project participants, headed by Anne Rose, include CMDR members Yossef Av-gay, Fiona Brinkman, Rachel Fernandez, Brett Finlay and Bob Hancock. Other participants include Steven Jones (Head, Bioinformatics, BC Genome Sequence Centre), Don Moerman (Director, C. elegans Reverse Genetics Facility), Sarah Otto (Assistant Professor and Peter Wall Scholar, Dept. of Zoology), and Francis Ouellette (Director, Bioinformatics Core Facility, Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics).
Dr. B. Brett Finlay selected as Howard Hughes Medical Institute Holiday Lecturer.
December 6 and 7, 1999
B. Brett Finlay, a CMDR member, was the first Canadian chosen by the prestigious Howard Hughes Foundation to deliver a "virtual, real time" lecture to thousands of high school students around the world. He was selected as one of only two speakers around the world to participate in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Holiday Lecture on Science for 1999, which was broadcast live on December 6 and 7, 1999 and is now available for viewing at any time through the internet.
2000 Dr. Chris Whitfield. Sponsored by the CMDR and the Department of Microbiology and Immunology
February 22, 2000
Chris Whitfield of the Dept of Microbiology, University of Guelph, presented a seminar, "Common themes and interactive pathways in the assembly of bacterial cell-surface glycoconjugates".
Pathogenomics Project web site and selected data presented to the public.
April 9, 2000
This interdisciplinary project funded primarily by the Peter Wall Institute, with additional funding from the CMDR, involved a group of 14 UBC faculty, of which a significant number are CMDR members. Selected data from their findings, including a new web-based sequence analysis tool they developed called PhyloBLAST, are available from the newly developed Pathogenomics website.
CMDR's 2-hour Seminar/Poster Presentation Series initiated.
June 9, 2000
CMDR presented the first in a series of 2-hour Seminar/Poster Presentations. The CMDR seminars are comprised of four speakers from the CMDR membership who present 15-minute overviews of their lab’s activities. An informal one-hour poster session follows, presenting theme-related research where faculty, researchers and students interact and exchange perspectives. This first session focused on Host-Pathogen Interactions. The speakers were Richard Stokes, Dept of Pediatrics, Yossef Av-Gay of the Dept of Medicine, Janet Chantler of Dept of Pathology and Monisha Scott, Hancock Lab and Carrie Rosenberger, Finlay Lab.
Special seminar sponsored by the CMDR and Biotechnology Laboratory: Dr. Lars Eckmann
June 27, 2000
Dr. Lars Eckmann, of the Department of Medicine, University of California, San Diego, presented his talk, "Intestinal Epithelium Host Defense against Enteric Pathogens".
CMDR Array Database Initiated
September 10, 2000
The beginnings of a database to house gene expression array data by CMDR members was initiated. This database will provide a forum for the posting of data to be used as supplementary information for publications, and also as a method for combining related studies together for easier comparison. While this database is currently in a flat file format, eventually a more flexible, searchable format will be initiated.
Special Seminar sponsored by the CMDR and the Department of Microbiology and Immunology: Dr. Stanley Opella
September 21, 2000
Dr. Stanley J. Opella, Dept of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, San Diego presented a seminar entitled "NMR Stuctural Studies of Membrane Proteins".
CMDR Seminar/Poster Presentation Series: Session 2
November 10, 2000
Speakers included Michelle Zaharik, Finlay Lab, Keith Pardee, Towers Lab, Nancy Lee, Kronstad Lab and Aleks Patrzykat, Hancock Lab.
2001 Dr Britt-Inger Marklund, Department of Microbiology, University of Umeå, Sweden
February 1, 2001
Dr. Marklund gave a seminar, "Catalases and Peroxidases in Mycobacteria", followed by a mini-symposium on mycobacterial research, in The Auditorium, BC Research Institute for Children’s & Women’s Health
Special Seminar sponsored by the CMDR and Cubist Pharmaceuticals
Dr. Olga Lomovskaya, Discovery Biology, Microcide Pharmaceuticals Inc., gave a seminar entitled "Targetingresistance mechanisms: efflux pump inhibitors as novel agents for combination therapy".
Canadian Food and Water Safety Network website developed
March 21, 2001
Check out the new Canadian Food and Water Safety Network website. This network's mandate is to facilitate communication and interaction between an interdisciplinary group of researchers, and between researchers and the public, with regard to food and water safety, foodborne disease and enteric infections.
CMDR Seminar/Poster Presentation Series: Session 3
Friday, April 20, 2001
Speakers included Corinne Ong, Dept of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Francois Jean, Dept of Microbiology and Immunology, George Mackie, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Dept and Rachel Fernandez, Dept of Microbiology and Immunology.
Dr. Keith Poole. Hosted by CMDR and the Dept of Microbiology and Immunology
May 8th, 2001
Dr. Keith Poole, Dept of Microbiology and Immunology, Queen’s University, Kingston, presented a seminar entitled, "The multidrug efflux pumps of Pseudomonas aeruginosa: antibiotics and a whole lot more".
Dr. Paul Hoffman. Hosted by CMDR and the Dept of Microbiology and Immunology
November 13, 2001
Dr. Paul Hoffman, Dept of Microbiology and Immunology, Dalhousie University, presented a seminar entitled, "Functional genomic studies of Helicobacter pylori: From pathogenesis to therapeutics".
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