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…

The DaCosta lab congratulates PhD candidate Niloufar Khosravi on receiving the Osseointegration Foundation student travel grant. Her abstract titled “A Close Look at Peri-implant Endosseous Wound Healing Inside the Living Body in Real-Time” was selected for the stipend after receiving the top scores of student-submitted research for the annual Academy of Osseointegration Meeting held March…

MSc candidate Christopher Gibson presented his graduate research at PEMED 2018: International Conference on Personalized and Precision Medicine in Paris, France. He won the most outstanding abstract award for his presentation entitled “Development and clinical translation of a new handheld imaging device for 5-ALA-induced fluorescence guided breast conserving surgery.” View the Abstract

A University of Toronto team from the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering (IBBME) discovered that nano-scale surface topology matters when it comes to vascularization of bone implants. They compared two titanium implants of the same chemical composition and varied only their surfaces at the nano scale. One was smooth and the other was rough…

PhD candidate Niloufar Khosravi, Dr. Ralph DaCosta and IBBME Professor John Davies publish in Nature Communications Biology today. The article describes their research on the effects of surface texture of surgical implants on healing and  neovascularization. An interview with the team can be found on the IBBME website.

MSc candidate Christopher Gibson wins travel award from the University of Toronto to attend the Personalized and Precision Medicine International Conference.  This conference will take place June 25-27. Christopher will be presenting on ongoing clinical research and biomedical device development. View the Conference Website

PhD candidate, Niloufar Khosravi, attended the Canadian Biomaterials Society annual meeting in Victoria, BC on May 16-19, 2018, winning the award for best oral presentation.  A copy of her abstract can be found on the CBS website. View the Abstract