Award-winning researcher and York alumna Cecilia Moens says that the time she spent at York helped lay the groundwork for a successful career. One could even say her time here was highly personal. Cecilia’s father, the late Distinguished Research Professor Peter Moens, was an early faculty member of the Faculty of Science, and as a child, she grew up “running around the sculptures and greenhouse outside the Farquharson Building.”

Moens decided to pursue her university education at York. Her undergraduate degree in Biology, which included opportunities to conduct primary research outside the classroom, thoroughly prepared her for a career in scientific research.  “By the time I finished my degree at York, it became crystal clear to me that this was the direction I wanted to go,” says Moens. “Here I am 25 years later, feeling just so lucky to still be doing it!”

Moens operates a lab in the Division of Basic Science at the renowned Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. As a Principal Investigator there, she studies the early development of the vertebrate brain using the transparent zebrafish embryo as an in vivo model system. Dr. Moens has been published over 35 times in the last seven years alone.

“The research I conducted at York proved to be essential to my current career. It was at York that I discovered my fascination for the field of Developmental Biology” says Moens.