Congratulations to Prof. Jennifer Mitchell on being awarded the Dorothy Shoichet Women Faculty in Science Award of Excellence
Prof. Jennifer Mitchell is the recipient of the inaugural Dorothy Shoichet Women Faculty in Science Award of Excellence.
Prof. Molly S. Shoichet, PhD, FRSC, O. Ont. has established this award in honour of her mother, an honorary degree recipient, for female faculty in any of the physical or life sciences, computer sciences or mathematics within the Faculty of Arts and Science at any of our three campuses.
Congratulations Prof. Mitchell!
Welcome to our newest CSB faculty members!
The Department of Cell & Systems Biology warmly welcomes 3 new faculty members to the department:
- Dr. John Calarco (Assistant Professor, Tenure-stream): Mechanisms and function of alternative pre-mRNA splicing in generating physiologically diverse neurons in C. elegans.
- Dr. Arneet Saltzman (Assistant Professor, CLTA): Chromatin regulation of cell fate decisions in the nervous system in C. elegans and the pathways through which disruption of Polycomb-mediated gene repression leads to a disease state.
- Dr. Shelley Lumba (Assistant Professor, CLTA): Abscisic acid signalling networks and their function under abiotic stress in Arabidopsis and Striga.
John and Shelley officially started their new positions in September, 2016 and Arneet will be starting in September, 2017. Many of you know Shelley as a member of our CSB community and I hope you will take a moment to welcome her in her new role. John will be spending much of his time in Boston for the next few months working on grant applications while we make progress here on his research space. However, he will endeavour to join us for faculty meetings and hopefully the anniversary symposium this month. In addition, John has joined the University of Toronto as a Medicine by Design Associate. For more details on appointment with MbD, please click here. While Arneet’s start date is a little further away, we will also welcome her to join faculty meetings and departmental events this academic year. I’m looking forward to personally introducing all three to all of you in the near future.
Prof. Vince Tropepe
Professor and Chair
Department of Cell & Systems Biology
Congratulations to Dr. Chris Garside on his renewal of funding for the WIT program
Congratulations to Dr. Chris Garside on his renewal of funding for the Writing Instructions for Teaching Assistants (WIT) program for 2nd year courses BIO 230, 270 and 271.
Congratulations to Prof. Maurice Ringuette on the success of his ATLAS proposal
Prof. Maurice Ringuette recently was awarded funding from the Advancing Teaching and Learning in Arts & Science (ATLAS) initiatives fund for his proposal for Accurate Animations for CSB327H1F: Extracurricular Matrix Dynamics and Associated Pathologies. Congratulations Prof. Ringuette!
Congratulations to Prof. Melody Neumann on the success of her online tool for student group work - 3rd Annual App Challenge Winner
UOFT WINNER IN 3RD ANNUAL APP CHALLENGE
TORONTO, ON – APRIL 13 – Melody Neumann, Associate Professor at University of Toronto has won the IMS Global 3rd Annual App Challenge in the Institutional App category for the online tool Team Up!. Working with Laurie Harrison, Director of Online Learning, a two-person design and programming team, and members from the Academic & Collaborative Technologies unit at UofT’s Information Technology Services, including spokesperson Ahalya Rajkumar, the online tool has garnered interest among instructors who facilitate group work.
“The Team Up! tool was one of our first projects to successfully integrate an external tool within the institutional Portal (Blackboard) using the IMS LTI standard”, says Rajkumar, a solutions developer for Team Up!, excited about enhancing the student learning experience. “LTI was an innovative approach, and this project helped us break new ground in architecting our Portal integrations.”
Neumann was delighted by the opportunity to highlight the teamwork that went into creating and launching the tool. “The creation of Team Up! was a fantastic example of how well teams…across the University of Toronto work together, and I am so pleased that the IMS Global Institutional App award recognizes this.”
Team Up! started as a tool for synchronous online group work that enables groups of students to work on problem sets remotely in real time. Since then the tool has received praise from instructors who want to facilitate effective and efficient group work.
The tool can be used in any discipline and was designed to facilitate good group dynamics during synchronous online group work, as well as provide a mechanism for peer teaching, immediate feedback, and part marks for approximate answers. The tool was also designed to transfer student marks directly into the Blackboard Grade Centre and to utilize the Blackboard grouping function.
How does working with IMS really stack up? “IMS Global is an outstanding consortium of schools and industry partners that is leading one of the most important educational revolutions occurring today. The University of Toronto has greatly benefited from its membership in IMS Global, and from the work being done by the consortium,” said Dr. Avi Hyman, Director of Academic & Collaborative Technologies at UofT.
“Our team is thrilled for Prof. Neumann’s first place app challenge success, and for having had the opportunity to support her innovative work,” Hyman added.
http://main.its.utoronto.ca/news/3rd-annual-app-challenge-winner/
Congratulations to Vince Tropepe, Darrell Desveaux and Tony Harris on their promotions to Full Professor!
The Department of Cell & Systems Biology is very happy to announce that Vince Tropepe, Darrell Desveaux and Tony Harris have all been approved for promotion to Full Professor effective 1 July 2016! This is well-deserved recognition of their strong research, teaching and administrative commitment and success.
CSB researcher Belinda Chang finds secrets to animal evolution in their eyes
Humans sometimes describe eyes as the window to the soul but for most animals, eyes are all about vision and vision is all about survival. Evolutionary biologist Belinda Chang leads a lab that is devoted to understanding how animals see.
For the complete article discussing Professor Chang’s work as published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in January and Molecular Biology and Evolution in February, click here.