Features

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Graduate student Christina Nona is fascinated by the human brain—and she’s making a name for herself studying the tiny chemicals in the brain that have an influence on behaviour.

Nona is researching two neural mechanisms found in the brain, kainate and NMDA receptors, and the role they play in learning and memory.

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Stephen Cook is among a short list of mathematics researchers whose ideas have spawned new fields of inquiry for current and future generations —and he teaches both undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Toronto.

A professor of computer science and mathematics, Cook is the 2012 winner of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council’s Herzberg Medal.

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Warren Chan is a professor at the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering (IBBME) at the University of Toronto, where he holds a Canada Research Chair in Bionanotechnology. Professor Chan works with quantum dots and nanoparticles—tiny particles that are helping researchers develop portable and cheaper diagnostic equipment for infectious diseases such as HIV, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C, malaria and syphilis.

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Graduate student Melanie Mastronardi of the Department of Chemistry is the first recipient of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council's newly established Gilles Brassard Doctoral Prize for Interdisciplinary Research.

Mastronardi is working to make nanotechnology more environmentally friendly so that when the technology is adopted for wider use, it will have a smaller environmental footprint.

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Renowned theoretical astrophysicist and scholar Lawrence Krauss will appear at the University of Toronto’s inaugural Science at the Movies screening Feb. 26, 2013.