Webinars

Alexander (Alex) Gebreamlak is a currently a first-year MPH Epidemiology student at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. He also works as a part-time clinical data analyst at The Hospital for Sick Children and is a student epidemiologist in Toronto Public Health’s Epidemiology and Data Analytics Unit. Alex’s academic and professional interests include both analytical and descriptive epidemiology, and he is eager to apply his skills across clinical research, statistical data analysis, causal inference, and fundamental machine learning to address healthcare gaps and health inequalities in Canada and the rest of the world.

Our Founder, Amirali Banani, had the pleasure of having Alex as his teacher for two courses at the University of Toronto’s Youth Summer Programme in Medicine (MedYSP) during the summer of 2021 and is delighted to have him speak at Youth STEM Initiative’s final webinar of Summer 2024!

Kevin Bermea is a post-doctoral fellow in the Adamo Cardiac Immunology Lab, with a previous fellowship at Johns Hopkins with Anne Margaret Murphy. He completed his M.D. and a M.Sc. in molecular biology and genetic engineering at the Universidad Autónoma de Nueva León. He worked as a physician in Monterrey, Mexico before moving to the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley to work as a research associate. Among other endeavors, he has worked to discover proteomic biomarkers for cardiac disease, and his work with the Adamo Lab aims to unscramble enigmas involving complex immune processes in the heart. Kevin has authored a book chapter on the implications of interphotoreceptor retinoid-binding protein in diabetic retinopathy, and his work will be featured in several upcoming publications. (Source) 

Our Founder, Amirali Banani, attended a two-week Pre-College program in his "Medical School Intensive" class at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland in July 2022. 

Dr. Michael Kobor, Canada Research Chair in Social Epigenetics, is exploring how childhood experiences can  get “under the skin” to affect health and behaviour throughout a  person’s life. Dr. Kobor’s research links fundamental molecular biology with psychology,  pediatrics and anthropology, to name just a few fields of study. He and his research team are using a newly created biological clock to measure children’s developmental maturity, and assessing the factors that associate with epigenetic tags on DNA and how they change over time.  Their work will improve our understanding of how gene/environment interactions lead to lifelong inequities in health outcomes, and could lead to the development of interventions that support at-risk  populations. (Source) Our Founder, Amirali Banani, had an internship at the Kobor Lab—a lab run by Dr. Kobor specializing particularly in DNA methylation research—at the BC Children's Hospital Research Institute in August 2023.

BOSTON, MA, UNITED STATES

Dr. Tsurumi's research involves mechanistic characterization and prediction model development for aging and aging-related diseases,  inflammatory conditions and  traumatic injuries. She uses a wide variety  of methods, including machine learning applications to analyze 'omics  (transcriptomic, epigenomic and proteomic) and electronic health record datasets, conducting epidemiological studies using national survey data, and characterizing clinically relevant molecular mechanisms using Drosophila, mice, and cell culture models. (Source) Along with her work at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Dr. Tsurumi teaches the Epigenetics and Gene Regulation course at Harvard Summer School, a class that our Founder, Amirali Banani, attended in July/August 2022.

VANCOUVER, BC, CANADA

Abisola is a Ph.D. candidate in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Parker Lab (BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute and UBC). She holds a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Lagos, Nigeria, and an MSc in Biochemistry from UBC in Canada. With over six years of laboratory experience, Abisola is skilled in various cutting-edge cellular and molecular techniques. Her research focuses on understanding how nutrients and their transporters can be leveraged to mitigate or treat metabolic diseases. Abisola is a recipient of the prestigious Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship and is currently investigating the metabolic consequences of systemic alanine depletion in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. She also serves as the chair of the Trainee Omics Group, providing support to fellow scientists in managing their research data.