Join us as we launch The University of Winnipeg’s first-ever PhD program: the PhD in Bioscience and Policy. Help us celebrate this historic milestone on Tuesday, March 18 at 10 a.m. in the Richardson College for the Environment and Science Complex atrium.
We are thrilled to launch this program, and we warmly invite faculty, staff, students, alumni, and community members to attend. The event is free to attend, but registration is required. Please RSVP by March 14 to join the celebration.
We hope you will join us as we mark a new era in graduate education at UWinnipeg.
Event speakers
This event will feature remarks from key individuals who helped bring the program to life, as well as from two students who plan to be among the first to pursue this exciting new degree, Hailey Langford and Simon DePasquale.
Langford is completing her MSc in Bioscience Technology and Public Policy with Dr. Anuraag Shrivastav at UWinnipeg. For her PhD in Bioscience and Policy she hopes to continue her work developing and testing a new blood test for colorectal cancer, to advance understanding of the genetic basis of colorectal cancer, and to scale up trials of her diagnostic test to a larger number of patients.
DePasquale is a member of the Upper Mohawk band, Six Nations of the Grand River Territory in Ontario. He completed his BSc Honours in Biology at UWinnipeg in Spring 2023 and is currently finishing his MSc in Integrative Biology at Wilfrid Laurier University, where he is studying marine movements, spawning habitats, and population genetics of Arctic fish in collaboration with Inuit researchers from the Kuglugtuk Hunters and Trappers Organization.
For his PhD in Bioscience and Policy he wants to work with Dr. Caleb Hasler using acoustic telemetry technology to study movements of fish in Lake Winnipeg. This work is essential for management and conservation of commercially and recreationally important fish populations worth tens of millions of dollars annually to the provincial economy.
About the PhD in Bioscience and Policy
This new PhD program is positioned to become an important contributor to the province’s educational and bioscience landscape.
Unique within western Canada, the PhD in Bioscience and Policy will equip students to apply their original research to public policy. Students will learn to mobilize bioscience discoveries to address societal issues such as climate change, environmental sustainability, and biomedicine and human health.
“This program reflects our commitment to addressing critical global challenges through interdisciplinary education and research,” said Dr. Pavlina Radia, Provost and Vice-President, Academic. “We are confident that it will produce leaders who contribute innovative solutions to both the public and private sectors.”
Students in the program will conduct research under the supervision of UWinnipeg faculty doing world-class research in bioscience, while also taking courses about science and policy, and science communication.
