CBU Biology Student Receives Top Honours

2011 Atlantic Provinces Council on the Sciences Conference

Fourteen biology students and two faculty (Tim Rawlings & Vielka Salazar) represented CBU at the APICS Undergraduate Biology Conference in Halifax, March 11-13.  The student body included first year student Jeff MacDonald, second year student Alicia Currie, six third year students Robert Cann,  Brian Finn, Dominic Gniewek, Khelsea MacDonald, James Postlethwaite, and Kurt Simmons and six fourth year students Alison Donovan, Jeff Clements, Jenn Latimer, Samantha Lawrence, Jeff Locke, and Jenn McPhee. 

As usual, the conference was great fun and the quality of student oral and poster presentations from the 12 APICS universities participating this year was amazing!  In total, 20 oral presentations were given and 19 posters were displayed.  Over the past three years of attending the conference, I have always returned from this conference excited about the research possibilities that exist at the undergraduate level, and this year was no exception.   I know that our students were also impressed by the diversity of honours projects being undertaken by undergraduate students, ranging from pure ecology to physiology to hard core molecular and cell biology.

Our student oral presenters, Jeff Clements (Sup: Tim Rawlings) and Jennifer Latimer (Sup: Katherine Jones/Michael Tanchak), gave excellent presentations and we couldn’t have asked for better ambassadors for our department.  Both of their talks would not have looked out of place at a graduate-level conference and I hope that this is where we will see both Jeff and Jenn in due course.  Samantha Lawrence (Sup: Tim Rawlings) also presented a beautiful poster which provided an excellent overview of her honours thesis research, and this was also well received.   

At the awards ceremony at on Sunday, CBU’s Jeff Clements was awarded the APICS Undergraduate Biology Conference Best Oral Presentation for 2011.  This is a phenomenal achievement, particularly given the quality of presentations at this conference.  I hope you will all congratulate Jeff when you see him next.  In looking over past best oral presentation winners spanning the period from 1977 – 2010, this is the FIRST time in 35 years that a CBU student has won the title of BEST oral presentation at the conference, which also serves to highlight what an impressive achievement this is.

Congratulations Jeff!

Dr. Timothy Rawlings
Assistant Professor in Biology
School of Science & Technology
Cape Breton University