Meet Our New BMLSc Sessional Instructor: Dr. Morgan Alford

We are pleased to welcome Dr. Morgan Alford as a new sessional instructor in the BMLSc program. Morgan has a strong background in Microbiology & Immunology, with experience in research and a commitment to teaching.

She is passionate about making her teaching inclusive and effective, and she is also incorporating digital skills and computational tools into her lessons to help students succeed in today’s technological world. View her bio. Welcome to BMLSc, Morgan!

Reflections on the Vancouver Summer Program (VSP) 2024

We recently completed another successful Vancouver Summer Program, hosting international students in the BMLSc program. Thank you to everyone who contributed to making this a meaningful experience for the students. We celebrated with a farewell event full of joyful moments and took many photos with the students.

Graduate Peer Research Support Forum

Our graduate students from Dr. Jacqueline Quandt’s lab, Emily Kamma and Vivian Zhu, have created a Piazza class for a new peer research support program. This will be a forum where everyone can ask questions, post tips and tricks, share reagents and protocols, learn about software that can help with your analysis, and more! For example, Vivian can share experiences with immunostaining analysis, and Emily can share experiences with flow cytometry. We welcome everyone to ask and answer questions in research skills such as cell culture, sequencing, animal work, protein assays, and statistics, just to name a few. We have already set up some folders for relevant topics. On the Piazza class, there is also a "Welcome to Piazza!" note that outlines tips for using the forum.

If you wish to join, please create or sign into your piazza account and sign up using the following links. Please feel free to share with colleagues in  your lab or other programs aside from pathology that may be interested in this shared resource, and we hope to see many of you join! If you have any questions, please email us at emily.kamma@ubc.ca or vivian.zhu@ubc.ca.

Sign up link: https://piazza.com/ubc.ca/other/science
Class homepage link: https://piazza.com/ubc.ca/other/science/home

Oman Delegation Visits CMPT for EQA Training

For the past two weeks the Canadian Microbiology Proficiency Testing (CMPT) program has been hosting two delegates from the Central Public Health Laboratories (CPHL) in Oman in our International EQA Training program. Since 1996, CMPT's International EQA Training program has provided instruction and mentorship to microbiology laboratory professionals around the world as they either start or scale up their own EQA programs. Past trainees have come from China, Belgium, Kenya, Oman, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, and Zimbabwe.

During their two week training at our facility in Vancouver, Canada, visitors learn the "nuts and bolts" of EQA program design and implementation in line with the ISO 17043: 2023 standard, and to practice hands-on sample production for clinical and environmental microbiology.

Please contact us if you would like to learn more about our International EQA Training Program.