Departmental Seminars

Our department is diverse, running from cell and molecular biology to ecosystems and evolution. We ask Departmental speakers to craft a seminar that has appeal to the breadth of an integrative biology department. 

Upcoming Departmental Seminars

Monday, March 9 (10:30 in Miller Hall RM 201) Dr. Nicanor Gonzalez-Morales, Biology Department, McGill University. The Drosophila perspective of muscle assembly and maintenance​. Abstract

Thursday, March 12 (10:30 in Miller Hall RM 201) Dr. Devang Mehta, Biological Sciences, University of Alberta. Post-genetic responses to abiotic stress in plants​​​. Abstract 

Monday, March 16 (10:30 in Miller Hall RM 201) Dr. Maria Aristizabal, University of British Columbia. Deciphering mechanisms of transcription regulation and their role in the biological embedding of experience​. Abstract

Thursday, March 19 (10:30 in Miller Hall RM 201) Dr. Matthew Andrusiak, Biological Sciences, University of California, San Diego. The molecular mechanisms driven by prion-like domain containing proteins​. Abstract

Monday, March 23: (10:30 in Miller Hall RM 201) Dr. Shrivani Pirahas, Dept. of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology,  University of Calgary. Mitochondrial metabolism and the control of animal growth.  Abstract

Thursday, March 26: (10:30 in Miller Hall RM 201) Dr. Barney Geddes, Biology Department, McMaster University. Harnessing the genetics of plant-microbe symbiosis for sustainable agriculture​. Abstract

Past Departmental Seminars

Jan. 23: Dr. John McKay Colorado State University. Commercializing Genetic Discoveries for the Sustainable Production of Cannabis and Maize. (Host Paul Martin)

Jan. 16: Dr. Joe Schwarcz, McGill Office for Science and Society. Hey! There are Cockroaches in my Chocolate Ice Cream! (Host Biology Graduate Student Association)
 
Nov. 19: Dr. Tim Healy, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, UC San Diego. Mechanisms underlying physiological adaptation: linking genotype to phenotype

Nov. 12: Dr. Erin McCallum, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. From mechanisms to populations: Assessing the ecological consequences of emerging pollutants for aquatic organisms 

Nov. 5: Dr. Alex Zimmer, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta. Shaping physiological phenotypes: The influence of genomic, developmental, and environmental inputs on salt and water balance in freshwater fishes

Oct 30: Cécilia Barouillet, Queen's Biology, Ph.D. Candidate. Long-term response of sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) nursery lakes to climate and watershed management activities in British Columbia (Canada).  (Host Brian Cumming)

Oct. 29:  Dr. Alex Little, Department of Ecology, Evolution & Marine Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara. The Price of Change: mechanisms and costs of adaptive plasticity

Oct. 22: Dr. Margaret Eng, Toxicology Centre, University of Saskatchewan. Integrating Laboratory and Field Approaches in Wildlife Toxicology

Oct. 3: Dr. Graham Scott, Department of Biology, McMaster University. Living the High Life: Integrative Functional Mechanisms of High-Altitude Adaptation.  (Host Yuxiang Wang)

Sept 3: Meghan Rains, Agloma University and Queen's Biology, Ph.D. Candidate. Investigating Suberin Biosynthesis in Poplar: Candidate Genes and Chemical Composition. (Supervisor Sharon Regan)

 

I've spent more time than many will believe [making microscopic observations], but I've done them with joy, and I've taken no notice those who have said why take so much trouble and what good is it?

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

It's a parts list... If I gave you the parts list for the Boeing 777 and it had 100,000 parts, I don't think you could screw it together and you certainly wouldn't understand why it flew

Eric Lander

What is true for E. coli is also true for the elephant

Jacques Monod

The world becomes full of organisms that have what it takes to become ancestors. That, in a sentence, is Darwinism

Richard Dawkins

Shall we conjecture that one and the same kind of living filaments is and has been the cause of all organic life?

Erasmus Darwin

Nature proceeds little by little from things lifeless to animal life in such a way that it's impossible to determine the line of demarcation

Aristotle

Cells let us walk, talk, think, make love, and realize the bath water is cold

Lorraine Lee Cudmore

In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history

Charles Darwin

It is my belief that the basic knowledge that we're providing to the world will have a profound impact on the human condition and the treatments for disease and our view of our place on the biological continuum

J. Craig Venter

Imagine a house coming together spontaneously from all the information contained in the bricks: that is how animal bodies are made

Neil Shubin

A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall live and which shall die - which variety or species shall increase in number, and which shall decrease, or finally become extinct

Charles Darwin

The stuff of life turned out to be not a quivering, glowing, wondrous gel but a contraption of tiny jigs, springs, hinges, rods, sheets, magnets, zippers, and trapdoors, assembled by a data tape whose information is copied, downloaded and scanned

Steven Pinker

We wish to discuss a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid. (D.N.A.). This structure has novel features which are of considerable biologic interest

Rosalind Franklin

We are biology. We are reminded of this at the beginning and the end, at birth and at death. In between we do what we can to forget

Mary Roach

The systems approach to biology will be the dominant theme in medicine

Leroy Hood

I've always been interested in animal behavior, and I keep reading about it because it's so surprising all the time - so many things are happening around us that we neglect to look at. Part of the passion I have for biology is based on this wonderment"

Isabella Rossellini

Because all of biology is connected, one can often make a breakthrough with an organism that exaggerates a particular phenomenon, and later explore the generality

Thomas Cech

Nothing in Biology makes sense except in the light of evolution

Theodosius Dobzhansky

Biology is now bigger than physics, as measured by the size of budgets, by the size of the workforce, or by the output of major discoveries; and biology is likely to remain the biggest part of science through the twenty-first century

- Freeman Dyson

Nothing can be more incorrect than the assumption one sometimes meets with, that physics has one method, chemistry another, and biology a third

- Thomas Huxley