Upcoming Seminars
October 21st, 2021 - Dr. Darryl Falzarano
The Mingling Minds seminar series is proud to announce our first seminar of our 2021-2022 season; the highly regarded Dr. Darryl Falzarano will be presenting his research, "Development of SARS-CoV-2 animal models for vaccine and therapeutic evaluation", on October 21st, 2021 at 4:00pm via Zoom (link can be found below). Attendees are encouraged to bring questions!
Please e-mail us if you have any questions and/or recommendations for upcoming seminar speakers!
2021 Rapid Response COVID-19 Research Funding Initiative
Mingling Minds Team
Dr. Alan Rosenberg
Alan Rosenberg, BA, MD, FRCPC
Dr. Rosenberg, a pediatric rheumatologist, provides care to Saskatchewan children and youth with various forms of arthritis and related rheumatic diseases. The Pediatric Rheumatology Clinical Program coordinates comprehensive multidisciplinary care at the Royal University Hospital and throughout Saskatchewan via travelling and telehealth clinics. Dr. Rosenberg also provides care for children with immunologic, including immunodeficiency disorders.
Dr. Rosenberg also directs the activities of The Pediatric Rheumatic Disease Research and Innovative Laboratory at the University of Saskatchewan. For more than two decades the Laboratory has maintained an active research program.
Dr. Joyce Wilson
Joyce Wilson, PhD
Dr. Wilson received her PhD from Queen’s University and postdoctoral training at the University of Georgia and the University of Toronto. She is currently a Professor at the University of Saskatchewan in the department of Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Immunology. Her research focuses on how viruses interact with host miRNA machinery and how viral life cycles are regulated by viral genomic RNA structures. In particular her lab has studied for many years how miR-122, a liver specific miRNA promotes HCV infections. MiR-122 anneals to the HCV 5’ untranslated region in association with the host protein Argonaute 2 and is required for efficient genome replication. It is also an important regulator of HCV tropism to the liver. Recent evidence suggests that miRNA annealing activates a molecular switch by changing the structure of the viral genomic RNA. And her work focuses on discovering how and why the virus became dependent on a host microRNA and characterizing the molecular details of the RNA structural switch. Further, her work aims to identify RNA structures and molecular switches in other viral genomes to gain a better understanding of how genomic RNA structures regulate virus life cycles. RNA motifs involved in virus replication are in general more conserved and intolerant to mutations making them promising therapeutic targets. Her research is funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada (NSERC).
Stefany Cornea
Stefany Cornea, Msc candidate
Stefany Cornea is a Health Sciences graduate student studying the effects of BRK family kinases in gastric cancer in the lab of Dr. Erique Lukong within the Cancer Research Cluster at the University of Saskatchewan. Stefany represents the Office of the Vice-Dean Research as a student project coordinator and is the administrator for the Mingling Minds seminar series.