On Friday August 30th, 2019 Niloufar Khosravi successfully defended her PhD dissertation.  Dr. Khosravi extends her gratitude to her supervisors Dr. John Davies and Dr. Ralph DaCosta as well as all others who supported her in her academic and personal life. She would also like to thank her external examinator, Dr Ali Khademhosseini, for helpful…

This summer, the DaCosta lab welcomed 5 wonderful highschool and undergraduate students to assist with the ongoing projects in the lab. Each of these students exceeded our expectations with their scientific inquiry, diligent lab work, and presentation skills. On August 16th, 2019 we celebrated their hard work with a luncheon, and presentation of certificates of…

Brigida DiMatteo, a Medical Biophysics summer student placed at the DaCosta lab this summer, presented her research focusing on the effects of metformin and radiation treatment on pancreatic tumour burden and spread in vivo. Abstract: Pancreatic cancer, the second most common gastrointestinal cancer, has a poor prognosis with an overall 5.1% 5-year relative survival rate.…

UofT FacMed JinH Congratulations to Helen Jin, who was recently awarded two University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine awards: 1) The David RAE Graduate Student Scholarship, awarded to one student from the Faculty of Medicine studying in the areas of leukemia and lymphoma. The award totals $6,100 for one year. 2) The Sona Naran PANCHA…

Mr. Vasanth Subramanian joined the DaCosta lab as a Clinical Research Coordinator in June 2019. He has completed two master’s degrees in mechanical engineering and Kinesiology from University of Illinois at Chicago (Chicago, IL) and University of North Carolina at Greensboro (Greensboro, NC) respectively. He obtained his undergrad degree in Mechanical Enginerring from SASTRA University…

On June 13-14, 2019, the DaCosta lab presented their intraoperative fluorescence image guidance device at the Canadian Breast Cancer Symposium, which was held at the Westin Harbour Castle in Toronto, Ontario. The symposium was a national multidisciplinary event aimed at developing a personalized approach in the management of breast cancer.  Attendees included general surgeons, breast…

Congratulations to Helen Jin for receiving the prestigious CIHR Canadian Graduate Scholarship (CGS-Master’s)! This award totals $17,500 for one year and is awarded based on academic excellence, research potential, and professional skills. Helen will be putting this scholarship to good use in our lab researching leukemia cell biology in the bone marrow microenvironment.

Dr. Sara Rapic and Tim Samuel are awarded a full travel grant to attend the São Paulo School of Advanced Science on Modern Topics in Biophotonics. The event will be held University of São Paulo campus in São Carlos, Brazil, March 20-29, 2019 and is based on courses on advanced biophotonics research themes, such as…

Helen Jin joined the DaCosta lab in January 2019. She received her bachelor’s degree in Life Sciences from Yale-NUS College (Singapore). Currently, she is a Medical Biophysics M.Sc. Candidate at the University of Toronto. Her project focuses on investigating the interaction of acute myeloid leukemia with the bone marrow microenvironment in order to elucidate new…

Dr. Shirley Chi-Tyan Wang joined the DaCosta lab as a Clinical Research Coordinator in June 2018. She completed a double major at the University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada) in Health Sciences and English Literature, and obtained her medical degree at the Ross University School of Medicine (Portsmouth, Dominica). She is the coordinator of our Phase…