All News & Events
SCWIST AGM - Save the Date! 
All members in good standing are cordially invited to attend the next SCWIST AGM on Tuesday June 26th.
More details to follow.
XX EVening - March 8, 2012
Along with TELUS World of Science, SCWIST is proud to present the 18th annual XX networking evening where participants can find out how amazing Wonder Women are making careers in science, engineering and technology.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
5:15 – 9:30 p.m.
TELUS World of Science
1455 Quebec Street (at Terminal)
Vancouver
$10 SCWIST members
$15 non-SCWIST members
Join us, at this women-only event, for a lively evening of networking, food and fun at TELUS World of Science.
Entrance includes a light dinner, time to schmooze, network and mingle with the Wonder Women, an Omni Max Film and door prizes!
Buy your tickets today at http://www.scwistevents.ca/
SCWIST Newsletter - January 2012
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UBC BrownBag Discussion - February 29, 2012
The BrownBag Series is a monthly event organized by the Society of Canadian Women in Science and Technology (SCWIST) whose purpose is to provide a place for learning and discussion of topics to help women in STEM fields advance their careers.
Negotiation Skills
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
12:00-1:30pm
UBC Point Grey Campus
Biodiversity Research Centre (Room 224)
We are happy to welcome Denise Baker as the facilitator of this session. She is the Assistant Dean of the Hari B. Varshney Business Career Centre at UBC’s Sauder School of Business and has extensive experience in career and leadership development.
Did you know that only 12.5% of women negotiate their salaries?
Have you ever NOT asked for something you thought appropriate or even necessary, but instead accepted the “inconvenience” that came with avoiding the uncomfortable conversation?
How do you feel about negotiating? Would you describe it as “trying to win the game” like many men, or do you associate feelings with it that are close to “going to the dentist”?*
In addition to explaining the techniques and etiquette of successful negotiation, Denise will address some of the fears generally associated with negotiation. The goal is to help us get comfortable with asking for what we want – and getting it. With a short exercise, we will start our negotiator training on the spot!
If you would like to join us for our BrownBag Meeting in February, please RSVP to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). For upcoming meetings in this series please visit http://www.scwistevents.ca.
Financial Planning Workshop - February 2, 2012
We Lift as We Climb—Women, Money, and Leadership Women are taking increasing financial control of Canada’s resources as business owners, income earners and investors. Women initiate 50% of businesses in Canada and we have the largest percentage of female business owners in the industrialized world. Currently, women own 50% of Canada’s assets and it is estimated that by 2019, that number will rise to 70%! What does this mean to us and to our world?How can we use this unprecedented economic opportunity to make deep and lasting social change?
Join us for a lively discussion of women, money and leadership led by Tracy Theemes, MA, CFP, FMA, FCSI, co-founder of Sophia Financial Group, a full service financial advisory firm that works with high net worth women investors and their families in Vancouver, BC.
Date: Thursday, February 2, 2012
Time: 6:00-9:00 PM
Location: Sophia Financial Group—3762 West 10th Avenue (at Alma Street), Vancouver, V6R 2G4
Fees: Free for SCWIST members / $8 for non-members (collected at the door)
Snacks and refreshments will be provided.
Please RSVP to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), as space is limited.
Speaker Bio:
Tracy Theemes, Financial Advisor, MA, CFP, FCSI, FDS. Sophia Financial Group
Prior to co-founding Sophia Financial Group in 2009, Tracy was a financial advisor for a Canadian bank owned brokerage firm and gained valuable international experience with Smith Barney, a US brokerage firm that dealt with 2/3 of America’s pentamillionaires in their Olympia, WA office. She specializes in addressing the needs of women investors and their families and has delivered hundreds of educational seminars ranging from socially responsible investing to behavioural finance to financial planning for women. She is the founder and lead facilitator for Wealth Academy for Women: Everything a Woman Needs to Know about her Finances in One Day. This event brings the top financial specialists in Vancouver together to provide education directed to women from all walks of life while raising money for Dress for Success. This and other sources of referrals create a day a week of pro bono work for Tracy and her business partner who leverage their networks to access services to financially empower women who may not otherwise have access to high quality advice and mentorship. Tracy’s educational background includes a Masters degree in counselling psychology. Her ongoing research interest is in the area of investor psychology and women and investing. She is a Certified Financial Planner, is insurance licensed and is a Fellow of the Canadian Securities Institute. She is also a Financial Divorce Specialist. Before becoming a financial advisor Tracy spent 10 years in management with an international play equipment company. She wrote a book and travelled around the world advising municipalities and countries on the importance of outdoor play for children. She founded, then sold, a specialty children’s furnishing company based in the US. Tracy is a believer that “we are stronger together than apart” and regularly participates in activities and events that promote and support women’s leadership.
Professor calls for holistic approach to managing watersheds
By Gordon Hoekstra, Vancouver Sun, December 28, 2011, p. A6
Decades of logging and ranching had stripped Murray Creek’s banks of any vegetation and plugged it full of silt, leaving it uninhabitable for fish.
It had been 20 years since anybody had a drink of water from the creek, located in the Nechako Valley, near Vander-hoof in northern B.C.
But thanks to a local rehabilitation effort, the creek is being restored to its original state.
The change has caught the attention of University of Northern B.C. health scientist Dr. Margot Parkes, whose work focuses on the importance of managing water for the health of people, as well as for a healthy environment.
Her research is aimed at an emerging area of science that says it is important to man-age ecosystems – the complex relationship between plants, animals, land, water and people – at the watershed level. Watersheds are the drainage areas of rivers.
The New Zealander likes to use a metaphor to describe the idea: As blood is to the human body, water is to the land and the people.
While it may seem straightforward – that water and health are connected, and should be managed as such – often people do not make that connection, says Parkes, a Canada Research chair at UNBC.
“The problem we face with watersheds is they are both complicated and complex. It’s not just water coming out of a tap, or the water flowing in rivers,” said Parkes.
“Whether it’s drinking, farming, mining development, pollution, forestry, sediments, the spawning pulse of salmon – you cannot avoid water flows and their effects.”
It’s why it makes sense to take a broader, connected management approach at the water-shed level, she said.
The problem is that this hardly ever takes place, says Parkes, who was a medical doctor before she pursued her postgraduate studies.
Instead, when health is examined or imagined, it takes place at the family, neighbourhood, city, regional, provincial or national level and it’s disconnected from the fact the drivers of health, and the very places people live, are in the natural world, noted Parkes.
You wouldn’t think of blood as separate from the health of a human body – separate from the oxygen it provides, for example – but that’s how water is viewed. “It’s absurd,” said Parkes.
The underpinning to the use of water as an overarching management tool is its scarcity.
While it is common for people to imagine Canada as a place that is water rich, that notion needs to be put into proper context, says Parkes.
There is an important distinction between water stocks and water supply. Water stocks are the fresh water in lakes, which is not the same as the flows of renewable water each year known as water supply.
While Canada has 20 per cent of the world’s fresh water stocks in its lakes, it has only 6.5 per cent of the world’s renewable water supply.
Where water flows is also important to how much is avail-able for people to use.
In Canada, 60 per cent of the country’s fresh water flows to the Arctic. It means less fresh water is available for use in densely populated southern Canada.
Despite the obvious importance that water plays in people’s lives and the emerging idea that it makes sense to incorporate watersheds in planning healthy communities, it is difficult to get water onto the planning radar screen, said Parkes.
That is, in part, because governments or agencies work separately and do not communicate with each other. Health authorities, provincial departments and regulators, federal agencies and communities all have different pieces of the responsibility for health, water and development, noted Parkes.
But the rehabilitation of Murray Creek is a good example of the potential in managing watersheds from a broader perspective, she said.
The Murray Creek effort was started by the Vanderhoof Fish and Game Club, but it has grown to include cooperation from provincial and federal agencies, the municipality of Vanderhoof, companies such as Rio Tinto Alcan and groups such as the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation. More recently the Northern Health Authority has become involved.
Critical vegetation areas were restored along the creek, and fencing was put up to keep cattle out. The aim is to restore populations of rainbow trout and coho salmon. Chinook salmon, which appear to be using the stream as a rearing environment, have already been found in the creek.
At some point, the water may be safe for drinking again.
Parkes’s outlook has already inspired Wayne Salewski, who headed up the Murray Creek rehabilitation effort.
The project is now being scaled up to encompass 32 creeks and streams that flow into the Nechako River.
The hope is to market cattle from the region as salmon-safe or salmon-friendly, per-haps charging a premium, says Salewski, a longtime resident of the logging and forestry com-munity of Vanderhoof.
The end result of the environmental effort is expected to not only create cleaner streams that support fish, but provide economic benefits that will create a healthier community, said Salewski.
Journal names colourful UBC professor science newsmaker of the year
Rosie Redfield challenged results of NASA study
By Margaret Munro, Vancouver Sun, December 22, 2011, p. A13
A critical thinker in Vancouver has been named one of the top science newsmakers of the year.
“She appeared like a shot out of the blogosphere: a wild-haired Canadian microbiologist with a propensity to say what was on her mind,” the leading research journal Nature says of Rosie Redfield, a professor at the University of B.C.
The journal editors say Redfield is one of 10 individuals who “had an impact, good or bad, on the world of science” in 2011. She was chosen for her “critical” inquiry and “remarkable experiment in open science” that challenged a now-infamous “arsenic life” study funded by NASA.
The Top 10 list also includes: Essam Sharaf, an engineer who was vaulted from demonstrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to Egypt’s parliament where he fought to rebuild science; astronomer Sara Seager at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is narrowing the search for other Earth-like worlds; and biologist Tatsuhiko Kodama, who criticized the Japanese government’s handling of the fallout from the Fukushima nuclear accident.
Diederik Stapel, a prolific Dutch psychologist who admitted to scientific fraud on a “spectacular” scale, also made the list. He didn’t just fudge data, the journal says, “he fabricated entire experiments.”
Reached at UBC, Redfield said “it’s really nice to be formally acknowledged.”
She chuckled about Nature’s reference to her hair, which has been pink and is currently lilac. “It changes all the time,” she said, explaining that she buys the dye at “the stores that sell black T-shirts and tattoos.”
Redfield created a firestorm of controversy after a U.S. team, funded by NASA, claimed a year ago that it had found bacteria that used arsenic in its DNA.
Like many scientists, Redfield was taken aback. If true, the finding meant a radically different type of biochemistry could fuel life.
An avid blogger, Redfield posted a scathing critique of the U.S. study, which had been published with much fanfare by the journal Science. “Basically, it doesn’t present any convincing evidence that arsenic has been incorporated into DNA,” she said.
Then Redfield decided to see if it would be possible to replicate the U.S. findings in her UBC lab. She has been documenting her progress on her blog, rrresearch.fieldofscience.com. It has become a “virtual lab meeting,” Nature says, in which scientists from around the world help troubleshoot her attempts to grow and study the bacteria.
At first, Redfield could not get the bacteria to grow on a medium containing arsenic. Then the bacteria took off and she has now shipped samples off to Princeton University where colleagues plan to test the microbes’ DNA over the holidays.
Redfield says she does not expect them to find any arsenic in the bacteria’s genetic material. Like many scientists, she believes the microbes can live in the presence of arsenic and suspects the U.S. DNA experiments were contaminated. The problem was then compounded when the results were rushed into print with the help of the promotional offices at NASA and Science.
Ford Doolittle, a Dalhousie University biochemist who hired Redfield for her first faculty job, told Nature that she has shown how science is sup-posed to work.
“Science is way too uncritical of itself,” Doolittle said. “We need more Rosies out there.”
Dogs domesticated ‘naturally’
Humans had little to do with it, study co-authored by B.C. researcher says
By Randy Boswell, Vancouver Sun, December 19, 2011, p. B2
A B.C. researcher who specializes in the biology of ancient dogs co-authored one of the most significant studies of the year in canine science: a paper detailing the world’s earliest evidence of an animal in transition from wild wolf to domesticated dog.
The “extraordinary preservation” of the creature’s 33,000-year-old skull – found in a cave in southern Siberia – has helped show that dog domestication “was, in most cases, entirely natural” and not really a “human accomplishment,” says evolutionary biologist Susan Crockford.
She was part of a six-member team of researchers from Russia, Britain, the U.S. and the Netherlands that turned the clock back on wolf-dog trans-formations by thousands of years and showed that the phenomenon probably happened many times in many places around the globe.
Crockford, co-author of the study published recently in the journal PLoS One and an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria, said the process of domestication began when wild packs of wolves – or even just a few individuals – began living at the fringes of human encampments and scavenging meals from piles of the discarded bones of human-hunted game.
She said lead researcher Nikolai Ovodov of the Russian Academy of Science “was immediately suspicious that there was something different” about the canine skull found in the Siberia’s Altai Mountains.
He turned to Crockford, an expert in dog domestication among aboriginal nations in North America, for help in analyzing the specimen and com-paring it with other early cases of canine evolution.
“It doesn’t meet all of the criteria for what we consider to be a fully domesticated dog,” she told Postmedia News. “It’s got some evidence that it is part-way through the process. That’s why we talk about an ‘incipient’ dog, because it’s smaller than a wolf but it still has wolf-sized teeth.”
Traits typical of canines trans-formed by generations of inter-action with human communities include a smaller, wider skull, shortened snout and smaller, more crowded teeth.
It’s believed the wolf-dog lineage seen in the Altai Mountains specimen did not continue through the Ice Age that took hold of the region beginning some 25,000 years ago.
The team’s research has added important new information to a lively debate among scientists over where, when and how dogs evolved from wolves. Some researchers have presented genetic evidence suggesting all dog lineages emerged following a particular domestication event in ancient China, though other studies point to dog origins in the Middle East.
Crockford said that from the Siberian case and other examples of partial domestication “it seems pretty clear that if it can get started and stop that it could have happened in any number of places” at different times around the world.
Significantly, she noted, a consensus has emerged among experts refuting the traditional theory that humans orchestrated the domestication of dogs to gain companionship or worker animals.
“Traditional anthropological definitions of domestication consider the process to be a deliberate act of selection by humans,” the published study states. “However, this view has been challenged in recent years by the hypothesis that animals colonized anthropogenic environments of their own volition and evolved into new [‘domes-tic’] species via natural evolutionary processes. ... After initial changes occurred, the resulting new species were modified during their association with people via natural adaptation, human selection, and genetic drift.”
UBC BrownBag Meeting - Facilitators & Speakers for 2012 Sessions Needed
The BrownBag Lunch Meeting series is a monthly event organized by the Society of Canadian Women in Science and Technology (SCWIST) whose purpose is to provide a place for learning and discussion of topics to help women in STEM fields advance their careers.
We meet every last Wednesday of the month at the Biodiversity Research Centre on UBC’s Point Grey Campus. Our audience at these meetings is a lively mix of undergraduate and graduate students, post-docs and professors at UBC who can openly speak their mind and discuss burning issues related to their career in a safe, including environment.
The participation of professional women in STEM is at the core of this program. Your experience and advice will enrich the outcome of these meetings and inspire the audience to be self-confident, and to set their goals high and reach them. Depending on the topic, these monthly meetings are either held in the format of a round table discussion with invited guests and an invited facilitator, or in the format of a workshop with an invited guest speaker giving an interactive presentation followed by open discussion.
For our upcoming meetings in 2012 we would like to invite women working in industry, academia and non-traditional fields related to STEM to join us for a round table discussion of the following topics:
*February 29: Negotiation Skills
*March 28: What is “female” leadership?
If you are interested in participating as a role model or facilitator, please contact the coordinators Carolina Chanis and Katja Dralle .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). For further information on upcoming events, please visit http://www.scwistevents.ca.
Depression drug may help insomniacs
By Charlie Fidelman, Vancouver Sun, December 15, 2011, p. B4
Montreal psychiatrist Gabriella Gobbi was testing a new drug on depression in her laboratory when a curious thing happened. The mice fell asleep.
It wasn’t the kind induced by sleeping pills but the deep, restorative slumber of childhood.
Conducted in collaboration with scientists in Italy, the discovery of a novel drug called UCM765 is expected to pave the way for new treatment for sleep disorders, which afflict millions worldwide.
Published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the research on rats and mice found the drug administered under the skin or directly into the brain had two distinct effects on sleep.
Rats fell asleep 60 per cent faster than the control group that did not have the drug, and they slept longer, increasing non-REM sleep, also known as “deep sleep” by 45 per cent, said Gobbi, an associate professor of psychiatry in the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University.
“It was like opening a dark box, a totally unknown world. We found it by serendipity,” said Gobbi, who led a team from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre on a multi-experiment, seven-year study of melatonin receptors.
Gobbi said she often treats people with sleep disorders and depression and the research was driven by her feelings of great sympathy for insomniacs.
Chemists in Italy who developed the drug from the hormone melatonin in 2005 initially had aimed to try to alleviate depression and anxiety.
It also was believed melatonin could alter the circadian rhythm or body clock.
“But its main effect was on sleep,” said Gobbi, whose discovery unveiled the inner workings of melatonin on two receptors in the brain called MT1 and MT2. These are localized in one area of the brain, the reticular thalamic nucleus, which is a “powerhouse of [restorative] sleep,” Gobbi said.
“It was tough because we went against conventional wisdom on melatonin. We thought both receptors would promote sleep and it’s not true; the receptors have opposite roles.”
The team tested the drug on the sleep-wake cycle of rats and mice lacking MT1 or MT2 receptors.
Gobbi’s team induced burst of activity with the drug in MT2 neurons, a key component of deep sleep.
They found that selectively treating one receptor can have therapeutic advantages without the side effects of sleep medication and anti-depressants now marketed for insomnia – for example, drug dependence and cognitive impairment, Gobbi said.
SCWIST GALA 2011 – Expanding Horizons Since 1981 – AWARDS CEREMONY
SCWIST would like to congratulate the winners and all the finalists of our 2011 Awards Ceremony. Each of these women represent a cross section of the personalities and accomplishments that SCWIST is proud to have as a part of its member base and it was our honour to present this years awards to Sandra Eix, Jaya Viswanathan, Rabab Ward and Evelyn Palmer.
Educator
Sandra Eix, Winner of the Educator Award – Sandy has a Bachelor of Science in Physics from Waterloo, a Bachelor of Education from Queen’s, and a Masters of Science and PhD in Physics from SFU. Sandy is Science World’s Science Learning Lead and has been inventing shows, programs, and exhibits to educate kids of all ages for the past 15 years, and for 11 the past years she has coordinated and hosted SCWIST’s flagship XX Evening networking event.
Leslie Johnstone – Leslie has been teaching high school science for 22 years, and spent the last 9 as the head of the Science Department at Point Grey Secondary School. Student evaluations show that Leslie is a kind, knowledgeable, fair and witty teacher who has inspired many students to excel.
Rahael Jalan – Rahael has played a leading role in improving the education of marginalized and less-fortunate students, especially those whose educational needs have traditionally not been recognized or prioritized by governments and teachers. Her initiatives have focused on students of Aboriginal descent across Canada and in townships of South Africa, including working through the Pacific Institute of Mathematical Sciences to initiate and implement the program “Aboriginal Gifts” to give students a better grasp of basic math principles.
Rising Star
Jaya Viswanathan, Winner of the Rising Star Award – Jaya is pursuing graduate studies in Neuroscience at UBC and is an active committee member for SCWIST’s ms infinity program. Jaya’s volunteer activities extend beyond SCWIST; Jaya is an active member of Let’s Talk Science, Brain Awareness – a UBC program that promotes science in schools. She has also volunteered in India, where she has spent time in orphanages teaching children of all ages basic Math and Science skills.
Anja Lanz – Anja is an Engineering Physics student at UBC, and has been incredibly active with both SCWIST and Women in Engineering Vancouver Region. Anja was the co-chair for the Building Communities Symposium, a grass-roots, first-ever event bringing together 120 women in engineering in British Columbia for networking and professional development workshops.
Sophie Stukas – Sophie Stukas is a PhD candidate in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at UBC, focusing on drug development for Alzheimer’s disease, and is a recipient of the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship for her PhD research. Sophie dedicates significant portions of her time volunteering through the GF Strong Rehabilitation Center, where she runs a women’s outpatient support group for women with neuromusculoskeletal injuries and disorders, and through Let’s Talk Science, where she volunteers in elementary classrooms with a goal of inspiring more girls to pursue careers in science.
Paradigm Shifter
Rabab Ward, Winner of the Paradigm Shifter Award – Rabab Ward is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UBC. She has published over 350 journal papers and conference articles, holds six patents that have been transferred to industry and has numerous affiliations and awards. Dr Ward’s research in the area of signal, image and video processing have changed the landscape of cable TV, HDTV, medical images, infant cry signals and brain computer interfaces. Her research impacts many of us on a daily basis. In addition to her excellent technical work she is responsible for initiating a new masters program and institute at UBC that focuses on emerging human-centred technology research.
Alexandra Morton – Alexandra has done research on orcas in the Broughton Archipelago in BC for the past 30 years. She has distinguished between populations of resident and transient orcas in their feeding and vocal behaviours as well as Pacific white-sided dolphins. Alexandra has used her research results on the impacts of fish farms on orca populations to challenge the jurisdiction of fish farms and provide recommendations to eradicate sea lice, receiving environmental and conservation awards for her books and campaigns.
Vivian Krause – Vivian has a background in nutrition which has given her experience in programs for food aid planning, management of farmed salmon and fish feed, and the salmon farming controversy. She has been instrumental in “rethink campaigns” around farmed salmon and sea lice, and her presentations convinced the federal government to turn down $8.3 million of spending by a US green trust through questioning foreign-funded campaigns regarding the environment.
Outstanding Volunteer
Evelyn Palmer, Winner of the Outstanding Volunteer Award – Evelyn has been an active promoter and member of SCWIST for the past 30 years. Her support has been as far reaching as participating in Science Weeks, panel discussions and math conferences, to engaging SFU to provide valuable support for SCWIST, and, most recently, spearheading the production of SCWIST’s 30th Anniversary DVD.
Linda Lanyon – Linda served on SCWIST’s Board of Directors for the past several years, only resigning when job opportunities prompted her to move to Sweden this fall. Linda was instrumental in the development of SCWIST’s volunteer programme and her work has resulted in SCWIST being recognized both locally and nationally for its use of highly skilled volunteers. Through Linda’s hard work and dedication to the volunteers programme, SCWIST now averages over 3000 volunteer hours each year.
Shabnam Rostamirad – Shabnam has been volunteering with IWIS for the past several years and has taken on many different responsibilities, from events to volunteer coordination. She has successfully organized and hosted several events for IWIS members and recently was instrumental in procuring a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research for a series of events called Café Scientifique. Shabnam is an incredibly enthusiastic and energetic volunteer, who cares deeply about people and the organizations for which she volunteers.
UBC Researcher Finishes 4th in Nikon Photomicrography Competition
Dr. Robin Young a Post Doctoral Fellow in the BioImaging Facility at the University of British Columbia was the top Canadian finisher in this year’s Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition, placing fourth with an image of Lepidozia reptans, a liverwort, which is a small primitive plant. See Robin’s image at http://www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/potd/2011/10/lepidozia-reptans.php
Wed Feb 01
