Hello! I just wanted to take the opportunity of the publication of our newsletter to introduce myself. My name is Dana Devine and I’m the new program director for the Graduate Studies Program in Pathology & Laboratory Medicine. Although this is a new role for me in the Department, I’m not new to PALM, having been a department member since 1987 when I arrived from Duke University with my newly minted PhD. My research interest is in hematology/hematopathology. Most of our work over the past 15 years has been focused on blood transfusion specifically seeking to understand the biochemical processes associated with cell aging in modern storage systems and using that information to improve the safety and quality of transfusion products for patients. My lab is in the UBC Centre for Blood Research, located on the 4th floor of the Life Sciences Institute on the Point Grey campus.
I’m excited to have the opportunity to lead our Graduate Studies Program. We have a strong, student-centric program and engaged faculty to supervise training. With a focus on attracting high quality students who will find success at UBC and in their subsequent careers, we help to support some of the great research that is done in our department. Our program does many things well, but we must stay vigilant. With any program there are challenges and ours is no exception. We have yet to develop ways to support and engage the postdoctoral fellows in our department to enhance their training experience and assist them with career development. We live in an expensive city and need to improve the financial support for our students, especially for those who come to the program from outside the lower mainland. Although as a ‘top 50’ university, UBC is a very attractive place to undertake graduate studies, we are still in competition with other schools for top students, as well as from other graduate programs at UBC and we need to focus on our recruiting. We’ll be looking for lots of student, postdoc and faculty input as we develop new strategies to keep our program vibrant