York University chemistry students Jason Gregor and Fatima Panju placed among the top 10 at the 39th Southern Ontario Undergraduate Student Chemistry Conference (SOUSCC), the largest undergraduate chemistry conference in the country.
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| Above, toasting their success, from left, Reihaneh Shankaie, Fatima Panju, Maisam Halabi, Derek Wilson, Jason Gregor, Mark Sever, Luba Bryushkova and Mihiret Kedida. (Dana Aljawhary is taking the picture.) |
Gregor, who is supervised by York chemistry Professor Sylvie Morin, placed first in the biological/medical category for his talk, “Investigating the Binding of Vancomycin Resistance Associated Regulator Protein with mutated DNA using Atomic Force Microscopy”.
Panju placed third in the same division for her presentation “Functional Analysis of a Chromatin Remodeling Protein in Tetrahymena thermophila”. Panju was supervised by York biology Professor Ronald Pearlman.
Gregor and Panju, both in fourth year, based their presentations on their fourth-year chemistry research projects. Accompanying them to SOUSCC on York’s eight-member team were Dana Aljawhary (supervised by Prof. Donald Hastie), Luba Bryushkova (supervised by Prof. Philip Johnson), Maisam Halabi (supervised by Prof. Rene Fournier), Mihiret Kedida (supervised by Prof. Derek Wilson), Mark Sever (supervised by Prof. Sylvie Morin) and Reihaneh Shankaie (supervised by Prof. Pierre Potvin).
Hosted this year by the University of Waterloo, the conference attracted 117 participants from Ontario universities. The conference provides undergraduate students with an opportunity to present their undergraduate research projects and network with other chemistry students. Nest year’s conference will be held at the University of Guelph.
For more information, visit the SOUSCC website.