Dr. Barbara Lee Keyfitz is Director of the Fields Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Toronto, Ontario, for the period 2004-2008. She is also John and Rebecca Moores Professor of Mathematics at the University of Houston, Texas. Keyfitz received her undergraduate education in mathematics at the University of Toronto and her MS and PhD from the Courant Institute, New York University. Her research area is Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the recipient of the 2005 Krieger-Nelson Prize of the Canadian Mathematical Society. Before joining the faculty of the University of Houston in 1983, she was a faculty member in Engineering at Columbia and Princeton, and in mathematics at Arizona State University. She also held visiting positions at the University of Nice, at Duke University, at Berkeley, at the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications in Minneapolis, at the Fields Institute, and at Brown University. She is past-President of the Association for Women in Mathematics and Treasurer of the International Council on Industrial and Applied Mathematics. In the fall of 2008, after her term as Director of Fields, she will join the faculty of the mathematics department at Ohio State University.

Dr. Dan Bizzotto joined UBC Chemistry in 1998. He completed his BSc (Hon) in Applied Chemistry from the University of Calgary in 1989, worked for one year at Nova-Husky and then pursued graduate studies at the University of Guelph. There he was supervised by Jacek Lipkowski and received his PhD in 1996, specializing in electrochemistry. Bizzotto traveled overseas as a postdoctoral researcher at the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom and at the Fritz-Haber-Institut (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft), Berlin. He was promoted to associate professor in July 2004. His current research interests include the study of electrochemical interfaces modified by organic molecules, use of various spectroscopic tools to interrogate the electrochemical interface as well as research into electrocatalysis for fuel cell applications. He is married and has three young children; in his spare time he is completing a renovation project that has gone on too long.

Dr. Melinda M. (Mindy) Brugman is a Meteorologist at the Pacific Storm Prediction Center of Environment Canada in Vancouver, BC. She obtained her BS in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Washington (Seattle) and her MS and PhD degrees in Geological and Planetary Sciences from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. She has worked for the USGS in Washington and Alaska and was nearly blown sky-high by Mount St. Helens and caught by a surging glacier in her early studies. After her postdoc at the VAW-ETH (Switzerland) in 1987 she taught geology and hydrology at Western Washington University the following year. In 1989, Brugman was hired as research scientist to lead the Glaciology Program for Environment Canada at NHRI in Saskatoon, where she was also an adjunct professor at the University of Saskatchewan, ICT secretary for IAHS and co-investigator for CRYSYS (NASA/EOS Canadian joint program). Upon leaving NHRI in 1996, she was a visiting professor of geophysics at the University of Mexico and worked with the Mexican National Disaster Institute. Brugman has researched and consulted with Columbia Mountains Institute and Parks Canada on runoff from glaciated alpine areas, glaciology and climate change. This research led to participation in the climate impacts in western Canada compendium and a return to Environment Canada in 1999, where she has recently held positions of meteorologist and high-impact weather researcher. Her present focus is on forecasting severe weather, long range climate, glaciers and snow, and related natural processes affecting safety in mountainous terrain.

Dr. Jennifer Bryan is an assistant professor at UBC, jointly appointed in the department of Statistics and the Michael Smith Laboratories. She is a member of UBiC, UBC's Bioinformatics Centre. After receiving a PhD in Biostatistics from the University of California, Berkeley, in May 2001, Bryan joined the UBC faculty in the summer of that same year. A native of Atlanta, Georgia, she graduated from Yale University in 1992 with a double major in German and Economics. After that, she worked for the Boston Consulting Group, before realizing her true calling in biostatistics. Her husband, Jim Bryan, is a colleague over in the department of Mathematics at UBC, and they have three cute little boys.

Dr. Vicky Choi is a scientist at D-Wave Systems Inc. She is currently on leave of absence as an assistant professor in the department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech. Her research interest is in the design and analysis of algorithms. She received her PhD from the department of Computer Science at Rutgers University in 2002. She was a visiting asssistant professor at the department of Computer Science and department of Biochemistry at Duke University from 2002 to 2004. She received her MPhil degree in Computer Science from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and her BSc degree in Mathematics from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Dr. Oanh Dang is currently the Associate Director of Business Development at Sirius Genomics where she is responsible for identifying and developing business opportunities to promote and ensure the company’s growth. She completed her BSc in Biochemistry with a Minor in Computer Science from the University of California at Davis, graduating with High Honours and as an elected member of Phi Beta Kappa. Dang received her PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the University of California at San Diego, where she worked on the activation of host cell signalling upon bacterial infection. Her work led to several original publications, a patent, and numerous presentations at major international conferences. She has held positions at Novozymes, Pinnacle BIO and Zymeworks, which helped her gain a unique industry perspective as well as knowledge in market research and competitor analysis. Together with her educational background, these qualifications combine to give her a thorough insight into the biotech industry.

Shona Ellis is a senior instructor in the Department of Botany at UBC. She teaches a broad range of courses including introductory plant biology, plant taxonomy, bryology and economic botany. Ellis’ research background is in plant secondary compounds and their biological activity, primarily using tissue culture systems. While doing her research Ellis became increasingly interested in plant structure and biodiversity. She was asked to teach the plant anatomy course and realized her passion lay in teaching. Ellis twice received the UBC Killam Teaching Prize, a university-wide recognition of excellence in teaching. A green ambassador beyond UBC, Ellis also shares her special fascination with mosses and liverworts, and with bog ecosystems, at various outreach and community events.

Dr. Alexandra (Sasha) Fedorova heads the systems research group at the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University. She has graduated with PhD in Computer Science from Harvard University in 2006. Her where thesis work was on operating system scheduling for multicore and multithreaded processors. During her PhD studies, Fedorova also worked at Sun Microsystems labs, where she researched operating system design for multicore processors and transactional memory. Since her arrival at SFU, Fedorova has co-founded the Systems, Networking and Architecture Research Group (SYNAR). Since 2007, she has served on six program committees and journal review boards. Her research has been recognized by international funding agencies and during her first 15 months at SFU, Fedorova has received five research grants and donations from Canadian National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), Sun Microsystems, and SFU. Fedorova is a lead inventor on nine US patent applications and has numerous publications in leading academic conferences.

Dr. Jennifer Gardy is a postdoctoral fellow in the Robert Hancock’s laboratory at UBC’s Centre for Microbial Diseases and Immunity Research, where she works on methods for the systems-level analysis of the mammalian innate immune system. Jennifer is also involved in several science media activities, including hosting CBC Television’s new half-hour science show, Project X. Jennifer completed her PhD at Simon Fraser University, finishing her degree in four years without ever having to put in late nights at the lab, and while simultaneously pursuing her interest in media activities! She was also awarded the Governor General’s Gold Medal as the top doctoral student graduating in 2006.

Sally Halliday, MA RCC (Counselling Psychology), is principal of Sally Halliday Counselling and Consulting Services. In addition to counselling individuals and couples in her private practice and Employee Assistance work, Sally develops and teaches courses at UBC Life and Career Centre. Sally combines her academic research on transitions with her practical experience as a teacher, counsellor and former journalist to help others who are making decisions during times of change. Drawing from her popular career transition course called Working on Purpose Sally Halliday will engage you in a way of thinking about change and decision-making, so that you can experience them creatively and with purpose.

Dr. Kim Hellemans is a MSFHR/IMPART postdoctoral fellow in the department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences at UBC. Her current research interests are on the functional consequences of prenatal alcohol exposure. Specifically, Hellemans is investigating why individuals with Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders have higher rates of mental illness, such as addiction and depression. A major focus of Hellemans' research is on sex and gender differences. Hellemans completed a BA (Honour's, '98) degree in Psychology from McGill University, a Master of Arts ('00) and PhD ('04) in Behavioural Neuroscience from Queen's University, and completed a two-year postdoc at Cambridge University in the department of Experimental Psychology. She has been a SCWIST board member (Secretary and Events Coordinator) since October 2007. In her spare time, Hellemans is an active recreational runner, enjoys baking sugary confections, and has been known to take the occasional afternoon off to go shopping.

Dr. Alan Mackworth is a Professor of Computer Science and Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence at the University of British Columbia. He works on constraint-based computational intelligence with applications in vision, robotics and situated agents. He is a pioneer in the areas of constraint satisfaction, robot soccer and constraint-based agents. Mackworth has published over 100 papers, and co-authored the text Computational Intelligence: A Logical Approach. He has served as President of IJCAI and President of CSCSI and was the founding Director of the UBC Laboratory for Computational Intelligence. He is now the Past President of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

Dr. Arne Mooers is an associate professor of Biodiversity at Simon Fraser University. He grew up in New Brunswick, spent a year as an exchange student in Switzerland, and then completed a BSc in Biology at McGill University in the late 1980’s, where he was heavily influenced by Graham Bell. Mooers traveled for a year and then went to Oxford (UK) to do a DPhil with Paul Harvey. After that, Mooers toured about at bit more and then settled into a post-doctoral position at UBC, where his mentors were Dolph Schluter and Mike Whitlock. Mooers left in late 1997 for a position at the Zoological Museum of Amsterdam, but returned to Vancouver three years later.

Dr. David Ng is the Director of UBC's Advanced Molecular Biology Laboratory. The AMBL is the educational branch of the Michael Smith Laboratories, which seeks to integrate the science community with the general public at large. He is a project co-leader in 'Terry', the UBC-wide educational initiative aimed at bridging the conceptual gap between Arts and Sciences. His writing has appeared in McSweeney's, Seed, The Walrus, The Believer, Maisonneuve, and MAKE Magazine. Also, he is the editor of The Science Creative Quarterly, a literary science
writing website. Dr. Ng’s research focuses on the interplay between molecular genetic technologies and less conventional subjects, such as, anthropology, history, and literature.

Dr. Jane Roskams is an internationally acclaimed neuroscientist working in the field of neural regeneration, spinal cord injury and stem cell biology. Prior to accepting a faculty position in Zoology and Psychiatry at UBC, she trained at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Based in the Life Sciences Institute at UBC, Roskams' research group is a core lab of the Brain Research Centre and routinely publishes in top tier neuroscience journals. She is highly sought after as a graduate and undergraduate mentor, and has served for several years on committees directing projects to develop career training programs for the International Society for Neuroscience, the NCE Stem cell network and CIHR. The recipient of several awards for research, mentorship and outreach, Roskams claims her biggest successes are her children, Breeshey and Dylan.

Dr. Patricia (Trish) Schulte did an undergraduate and master's degree in the department of Zoology at UBC, and earned her PhD in Biological Sciences at Stanford University. Following graduation, she took up a position as an assistant professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Waterloo. She later moved to UBC where she is now an associate professor in the department of Zoology. Her research group, which consists of 15 trainees (ranging from undergraduates to postdoctoral fellows), focuses on the response of fishes to environmental stressors, including global climate change. She is also the co-author of the leading undergraduate textbook in animal physiology. As a semi-professional musician, Schulte currently sings with the Vancouver Bach Choir.

Cynthia Shippam-Brett is a member of the Intellectual Property Group in the Vancouver office of Gowlings. Her practice is focused on patent prosecution and drafting for the life sciences, including pharmacology, agriculture, microbiology, cancer diagnostics and therapeutics, molecular biology, medical devices, proteomics and chemistry. She also brings industry experience in bioinformatics and proteomics assay development. Before joining Gowlings, Dr. Shippam-Brett worked in the University of British Columbia University-Industry Liaison Office, where she was involved in the management, strategy and licensing of intellectual property, as well as drafting, filing and prosecution of patent applications in Canada, the U.S., and other major countries. Her experience in academia provides her with a client’s view of intellectual property and the patent process.