Join us for our Conversations in Convergence series which is an interactive discussions between Medicine by Design researchers who study similar questions using different approaches.
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.
Our speakers will be:
- Courtney Jones, PhD – Scientist, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network and Assistant Professor, Department of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto
- Sophie McGibbon-Gardner – PhD Candidate, Department of Physics, University of Toronto
Event theme: Deciphering cancer heterogeneity and metabolomics using different approaches
Speaker Biographies:
Courtney Jones is a Scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network, and Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto. Professor Jones received her doctorate from New York University in 2014 studying mechanisms of therapy resistance in pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia. She continued her training as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Craig Jordan at the University of Colorado where she studied metabolic properties of leukemia stem cells (LSCs).
Sophie is a PhD Candidate focusing on biophysics – particularly the dynamics of cells. She is from Nova Scotia, where she completed her undergraduate degree in physics and discovered the power of using quantitative and computational approaches to better understand complex systems. As a PhD student, she has used these approaches to identify underlying dynamics of cells when finding answers experimentally is difficult or impossible. She has focused on understanding heritable heterogeneity in cellular reprogramming and assessing the role of tumor cell fitness in cancer treatment.