The first-ever Soup & Science event, held in 2006, was hardly an extravagant affair. Professors and students gathered together in the second-floor lobby of the Trottier building to talk science, pass along research developments, and, of course, share in the event’s eponymous light refreshments. Thirty editions and a venue change[Read More…]
Student Research
The cognitive mechanisms behind depression
One in five Canadians will experience some form of mental illness in a given year. By the age of 40, 50 per cent of the population will have had a mental illness as the result of a complex interaction between personality, biological, and environmental factors. Bipolar disorder has a clear,[Read More…]
Racialized people receive lower quality mental health services
Over the last few years, campaigns such as Bell Let’s Talk and a greater representation of mental health have increased awareness of and reduced stigma associated with accessing mental health services. Despite these steps forward, many people of colour still have trouble accessing quality services. Sommer Knight, a graduate student[Read More…]
Uncovering past climates through paleobotany
Paleontology has long offered scientists insight into the mysteries of prehistory. Through excavations of colossal skeletons, petrified insects, and fossilized plants, researchers can uncover what life looked like long ago. Despite the extensive study of animals from the Cretaceous period, which stretched from 145.5 million years ago to the dinosaur[Read More…]
A new era of precision medicine to start at McGill
There are three things that get doctors jazzed up: Sleep, coffee, and precision medicine. Caricatures aside, the next stage of medicine will likely include increasingly accurate diagnoses and personalized treatments that consider patients’ genetics, known as precision medicine. Large tissue sample collections and big data on tissue donors have been[Read More…]
Searching for a home away from home
Scientists believe that planets outside of the solar system capable of supporting life should look a lot like Earth. The theory posits that if the chemical components comprising Earth’s atmosphere can be found in that of distant planets, those worlds could harbour similar carbon-based life-forms. This summer, two McGill University[Read More…]
Blending Western and traditional medicine in Colombia
In 2014, Juan Pablo Pimentel, a PhD candidate in the Department of Family Medicine at McGill, created a pilot exercise that has since become the basis for his PhD thesis. Working with Family Medicine professors Dr. Neil Andersson and Dr. Anne Cockcroft, Pimentel devised a way for medical students in[Read More…]
The Willy Trip: A student initiative to learn about rocks
In many programs at McGill, experiential learning opportunities are difficult to access. A student group with a passion for geology has found their own solution to this frustrating barrier. Every year, students from the earth and planetary science department organize a reading week field trip to a geologically-rich region of[Read More…]
McGill alumni poised to blow out speaker industry
Audio loudspeakers, unlike many other technologies, have seen relatively little advancement since their creation in the late 1800s. That was until ORA Graphene Audio Inc., founded by brothers and McGill PhD graduates Robert-Eric Gaskell and Peter Gaskell, integrated a new material into their speaker design—taking the audio world by storm[Read More…]
McGill alumnus develops one-handed surgical knot-tying method
McGill alumnus Farah Na’el Musharbash has created a new method to tie surgical knots that only requires the use of one hand, which can be greatly advantageous to a surgeon. After attending McGill University from 2012 to 2015, Musharbash began medical school at the Washington University School of Medicine in[Read More…]