UNews - Dylan Girodat

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge researchers awarded federal research grants worth more than $3 million

caroline.zentner — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 21:50:59 +0000

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge researchers are among the successful applicants for federal grants announced by The Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Industry and Minister responsible for Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions, and the Honourable Marjorie Michel, Minister of Health.

The more than $1.3 billion in funding supports over 9,700 researchers and research projects in Canada through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

“From brain plasticity and the mechanism of low-dose radiation to supporting newcomers through mentoring, these grants illustrate the diversity of research being done at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge,” says Dr. Dena McMartin, vice-president of research. “This funding not only helps established researchers continue their work but also helps our early career researchers build their research programs. Ultimately, our students benefit with increased opportunities to engage in research throughout their post-secondary careers.”

In total, ULethbridge received funding from NSERC for nine Discovery Grants and two Discovery Development Grants. The Discovery Grants will bring in nearly $475,000 a year for the next five years. The research projects include the following:

Dr. Gerlinde Metz (Neuroscience) will receive $96,000 per year for a study looking at the social determinants of experience-dependent brain plasticity.
Dr. Stacey Wetmore (Chemistry & Biochemistry) will receive $89,000 per year for a project involving computer modelling of modified RNA.
Dr. Olga Kovalchuk (Biological Sciences) was awarded $55,000 annually to study the fundamental mechanisms of low-dose radiation.
Dr. Borries Demeler (Chemistry & Biochemistry) is set to receive $47,000 yearly for solution studies of interacting biopolymer systems.
Dr. Hadi Kharaghani (Mathematics & Computer Science) will receive $32,000 a year for his project on special orthogonal matrices.

The remainder of the NSERC recipients are four early career researchers, each of whom received a Discovery Launch Supplement of $12,500 in addition to their Discovery Grant.

Dr. Corina Birghila (Mathematics & Computer Science) was awarded a yearly amount of $31,000 for a project titled Optimal Decision under Uncertainty.
Dr. Jessica Willi (Chemistry & Biochemistry) will receive $44,000 annually for a project on ribosome functions through synthetic biology.
Dr. Vineet Rathod (Chemistry & Biochemistry) will receive $38,000 annually to examine the structure-function relationship of natural and engineered amyloid proteins.
Dr. Dylan Girodat (Chemistry & Biochemistry) will receive $42,000 per year for a project on the structural dynamics of ribosomes during translation.

In addition, Discovery Development Grants, worth $22,000 each, were awarded to Drs. Christopher Hopkinson (Geography & Environment) and Marc Bomhof (Kinesiology and Physical Education).

Hopkinson will use remote sensing to model vegetation and snowpack response to wildland fire in headwater basins.
Bomhof intends to look at the interplay between exercise and dietary factors on appetite regulation.

ULethbridge social science and humanities researchers were awarded $645,000 in SSHRC Insight Grants.

Dr. Daniel O'Donnell (English) will work on a project involving Research Data Management and Research Data Infrastructure by humanities researchers.
Dr. Scott Rathwell (Kinesiology) wants to enhance sport participation, promote physical activity and improve health outcomes for aging adults by establishing a framework for effective sport programming in middle-aged and older adults.

Several ULethbridge researchers are the recipients of Insight Development Grants totalling more than $291,000.

Dr. Toupey Luft (Education) has designed a project to address the gap in understanding how arts-based mentorship may enhance a sense of belonging for newcomer young adults.
Dr. Kenneth Holyoke’s (Geography & Environment) project investigates the nature and scope of climate impacts on the Wolastoqiyik and Wabanaki archaeological record in New Brunswick.
Dr. Justin Raycraft’s (Anthropology) objective in this project is to increase understanding of the social dimensions of human-carnivore coexistence in the Tarangire ecosystem of northern Tanzania.
Dr. Jeffrey MacCormack (Education) will develop a professional development intervention consisting of a community of practice for teachers and principals where they learn evidence-based practices to support students with profound and multiple disabilities.
Dr. Miranda Leibel (Liberal Education) will examine how the creation and maintenance of postal services are an important component of Canadian state- and nation-building.

Research paper examines novel approaches to addressing antibiotic-resistant pathogens

trevor.kenney — Mon, 02 Mar 2020 23:24:01 +0000

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge researchers in the Alberta RNA Research and Training Institute (ARRTI) are making strides in addressing the antibiotic crisis caused by the steady emergence and spread of antibiotic-resistant pathogens.

Dr. HJ Wieden, standing, with student Josh Friesen in the ARRTI lab..

Recent work on the molecular basis of antibiotic action conducted in the research group of Dr. Hans-Joachim Wieden, director of ARRTI, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). This report, published in one of the three most influential scientific journals in the world, is a result of a collaboration with Dr. Scott Blanchard (St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and adjunct professor at Weill Cornell Medical College) and Dr. Karissa Sanbonmatsu (Los Alamos National Laboratory).

“Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) continues to be a global health risk and we need new strategies for developing antimicrobials,” says Wieden, a professor in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry. “A global action plan on AMR was endorsed at the World Health Assembly in 2015 and even though this is one of the most predictable challenges for medicine worldwide, research focusing on identifying new antibiotics has diminished significantly.”

Wieden and his graduate students, including co-author Dr. Dylan Girodat (PhD ’19), study the bacterial ribosome and the biomolecular factors that regulate its function. The bacterial ribosome is the part of the essential cellular machinery responsible for protein production and therefore a target for more than 50 per cent of the currently used antibiotics.

A closer look at the ribosome.

Wieden says there are two broad approaches to addressing the issue, finding new drugs for known targets or identifying novel targets for known or existing drugs. Their paper, Elongation factor-Tu can repetitively engage aminoacyl-tRNA within the ribosome during the proofreading stage of tRNA selection, examines the EF-Tu protein and how it works with the ribosome during the complicated process of translation.

“By understanding, at the molecular level, how EF-Tu and the ribosome work together, we are convinced it will be possible to identify novel targets for antimicrobials or even a completely novel mode of action,” says Wieden.

The work by Girodat, who recently defended his PhD, has translated into an outstanding professional opportunity as well.

“Not only has Dylan’s work been published in a fantastic journal, he’s secured a postdoctoral position with Dr. Sanbonmatsu at the Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico,” says Wieden. “This is the kind of success and impact that sets U of L trainees apart.”

U of L graduate students earn GreenSTEM funding in support of biotech start-up

trevor.kenney — Tue, 25 Feb 2020 21:16:06 +0000

The southern Alberta biotech industry will get a boost this spring thanks to some innovative work out of the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge and funding support from the Government of Alberta’s GreenSTEM program.

Harland Brandon

Allos Bioscience, a start-up company that designs and produces protein-based biosensors, is led by PhD candidates Luc Roberts (BSc ’12) and Harland Brandon (BSc ’13). The two, with support from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ’s Alberta RNA Research and Training Institute (ARRTI), its director Dr. H.J. Wieden, Dr. Wade Abbott of the Lethbridge Research and Development Centre and Synbridge (the synthetic biology makerspace on campus), are members of the first cohort of GreenSTEM fellows in the province.

Luc Roberts

“With the funding from GreenSTEM and the support of Synbridge and the Wieden lab, we now have the opportunity to leverage the rich infrastructure here at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ,” says Roberts. “Without this funding, I doubt we ever would have attempted to do it. They partner you with business mentors, provide training opportunities and really help you create the foundation for your business. We actually came into the program after the first cohort was selected and the first thing we noticed was how supportive and collegial the other fellows are.”

GreenSTEM is an entrepreneurial pilot program for recent graduates of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) masters and PhD programs. It provides funding support over two years for entrepreneurially inclined, technically skilled participants who are working on hardware-based technologies with emissions reduction potential. The GreenSTEM fellows are hosted by Alberta’s research universities, including the U of L, ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta and ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Calgary.

Roberts and Brandon based their idea off work done by the U of L’s Dr. Dylan Girodat (BSc ’13, PHD ’19, currently working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory) and PhD candidate Dustin Smith (BSc ’13, MSc ’17).

“The detection of specific biomolecules is an important part of many industrial and academic processes,” says Roberts. “However, sensors that detect and differentiate between similar molecules are not readily available for all types of molecules, or require significant time and technical infrastructure for detection.”

Their company proposes to develop custom biosensors for a variety of applications, including the biofuel industry and any number of ag biotech uses. Their biosensors are biodegradable detection systems that provide rapid, sensitive and selective measurements of a desired chemical in solution. They currently have three working prototypes (each detecting a unique biomolecule) and their main focus is on green technologies.

“Our first priority is to do some strong market research, and talk to as many biofuel people as we can to show them what we have and whether it might be helpful to their business,” says Brandon. “Some of the first advice we’ve been offered about building our business, is to ensure we’re satisfying a need with our product.”

Roberts says they are also looking at custom applications, finding people in either energy or research sectors who have a need to detect certain molecules, then partnering with them to build a custom biosensor for that need.

“Either you make it and sell it directly to them or you license what you’ve designed and sell it to a biotech company, and they build it on a large scale,” he says. “We think the value in our company is the technology and the development pipeline and less an actual, physical product.”

GreenSTEM provides annual fellowship stipends (essentially salaries) as well as seed funding to cover technology and business development expenses. Additionally, the program provides technology-focused entrepreneurship programming, technical and business mentorship and networking opportunities with investors, venture capital organizations, service providers and potential industry partners.

“There’s a lot of biotech going on in southern Alberta and it’s growing much faster than most people realize,” adds Brandon. “This rapid increase in biotech and green energy technologies is where GreenSTEM can make such a big impact, and afford us an opportunity to contribute to that sector.”

The intake for the latest round of GreenSTEM has just opened. Expressions of interest are being accepted from Feb. 24 through Mar. 23. For more information, visit alberta.ca/greenstem.

Chinook Symposium winners announced

caroline.zentner — Tue, 22 Sep 2015 16:54:52 +0000

With 39 competitors at this year's Chinook Symposium in Chemistry and Biochemistry, judges had a difficult task. After a full afternoon of judging, a slate of winners was chosen.

Top row from left to right — Doug Turnbull, Brooke Mackay, Jalyce Heller, Connor MacNeil and Doug Kiss. On the bottom row from left to right are Justin Vigar, Katherine Gzyl, Dylan Girodat, Katie Wilson and Anileen Pageni.

Lesley Brown, vice-provost and associate vice-president (academic), was on hand to congratulate the winners.

In the undergraduate chemistry category, Doug Turnbull was awarded first place and Brooke Mackay was awarded second place. In the undergraduate biochemistry category, Colyn Cleland (photo unavailable) received first place and Jalyce Heller received second place.

In the master's chemistry section, Connor MacNeil took first place and Doug Kiss took second place. In the master's biochemistry group, Justin Vigar took first place and Katherine Gzyl took second place.

In the doctoral category, Dylan Girodat took first place and Katie Wilson took second place.

Devaney Holland (photo unavailable) was named rookie of the year and Anileen Pageni, a high school student, received an honourable mention and made department history by doing research in the same department at the same time as her father, Binod, a post-doctoral fellow.

Chinook Symposium winners announced

caroline.zentner — Thu, 02 Oct 2014 17:32:53 +0000

Winners in the recent Chinook Symposium student conference and poster competition held by the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry received both recognition and cash for their hard work.

In the undergraduate biochemistry category, Dominic Czekay took first place and Ian Andrews took second. In the undergraduate chemistry category, first place went to Jackson Knott and second place went to Nathan Kostiuk.

In the graduate biochemistry category, Justin Vigar took first place while Dylan Girodat took second place. In the graduate chemistry category, first place went to Stefan Lenz and second place to Katie Wilson.

Laura Keffer-Wilkes received the Loren Helpler Gold Medal for PhD Research Excellence for her research presentation. Dr. Purshotam Sharma received the inaugural Christopher Owen Bender award for the best presentation by a post-doctoral fellow.

The panel of judges included Dr. Raja Kamalampeta, Dr. Nehal Thakor, Dr. Binod Pageni, David Hill, Dr. Tony Russell, Dr. Senthil Kumar, Tony Montina, Dr. Rene Boere and Dr. Chris Bender.

The department extends its thanks to the judges and congratulations to all the participants.

Thirty-five students, including post-doctoral fellows, doctoral candidates, master’s and undergraduate students and a high school student participated this year. First-place winners received $300 and second-place winners received $100.

UNews - Dylan Girodat

��Ѹ�����Դ���߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge researchers awarded federal research grants worth more than $3 million

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��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge researchers awarded federal research grants worth more than $3 million