Conversations in Convergence: Jesse Gillis, PhD, and Alaura Androschuk

Note: We are excited to transition Conversations in Convergence from a virtual to an in-person event, providing more opportunity for networking and potential collaboration.

Join us for our Conversations in Convergence series, which features interactive discussions between Medicine by Design researchers who study similar questions using different approaches.

The theme of this conversation will be, “Immune modulation by extrinsic and environmental factors.”
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Speakers

Alaura Androschuk , PhD candidate in Michael Sefton’s lab, Institute of Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry.

Identifying signalling pathways underlying biomaterial-driven terminal axon growth using single nucleus RNA-sequencing
Alaura Androschuk is a PhD candidate focusing on the use of biomaterials for endogenous repair of tissues, specifically subcutaneous nerve regeneration. Under the supervision of  Michael Sefton, she has focused in part on identifying the signalling pathways and cells underlying the biomaterial-driven repair of complex tissues using proteomics and single nucleus transcriptomics.

Jesse Gillis, Associate Professor and Bassingthwaighte Chair in Integrative Physiology, Department of Physiology, University of Toronto.

Buffered and unbuffered cell lineage variability
Jesse Gillis completed his undergraduate in Biophysics at the University of Toronto, where he also received his PhD in Neuroscience in 2007. His post-doctoral training was done at the Centre for High-throughput Biology at UBC. There, he focused on meta-analysis of expression data, and particularly co-expression analysis, which infers functionality between genes based on shared expression profiles, a form of network analysis. Jesse joined the faculty of CSHL in 2012 with a central focus on improving network analysis. In 2017, he was promoted to Associate Professor at CSHL with his work focusing on single cell analysis, particularly in collaboration with researchers in the BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network. In 2022, Jesse returned to U of T as the inaugural Bassingthwaighte Chair in Integrative Physiology and a Medicine by Design investigator.

About Conversations in Convergence

The goal is to foster cross-disciplinary discussions in support of convergence, which is the integration of approaches from engineering, science, medicine and other fields to expand knowledge and spark innovation. The researchers will discuss how their unique perspectives, knowledge and ideas inform their work, and how their diverse approaches intersect and complement one another to advance regenerative medicine.