UNews - Hans-Joachim (HJ) Wieden

Path of learning has taken Justin Vigar around the world

caroline.zentner — Fri, 18 Oct 2019 17:46:46 +0000

A love of all things outdoors — mountain biking, skiing and fly fishing — led Justin Vigar (BSc ’12) to the town of Whistler, British Columbia after he graduated from Lethbridge Collegiate Institute.

There he found the good life, surrounded by a beautiful environment and happy, fit, excited people doing what they loved. The fly in the ointment? Most people in Whistler were under the age of 25 and couldn’t afford to sustainably live there.

“I thought ‘I’m going to be a dentist,’ so I applied to U of A and U of L,” he says. “As a dentist I could probably work four days a week and afford to live in Whistler.”

He chose the U of L and found molecular biology particularly enjoyable in his first year of studies. His enjoyment turned into an excitement for science that continued to build throughout his undergraduate studies. He found the sciences meshed with his own concerns. Like many youth growing up, Vigar had heard a lot about problems facing our world, including climate change, the global food crises, mass extinctions, pollution and pandemics.

“As I was learning about curiosity-driven research and getting more excited about discovery and the inherent beauty of the natural world, I was also seeing how innovations in science were directly tackling critical global problems,” he says. “If I was going to have a meaningful career able to contribute to solving some of these problems, I thought science would be the way to go. Part of me still wanted to be a dentist though. In order to build my resume to be competitive for professional school I volunteered a lot and joined iGEM.”

Participating in iGEM proved to be both a foundation and a launching pad. Vigar credits iGEM with giving him a solid work ethic and the opportunity to gain skills in lab work.

“In addition to working in the lab; we were collaborating with industry partners, community leaders and artists towards reducing environmental degradation caused by oilsands development,” he says. “The iGEM program at the U of L gives you a lot of different experiences, like going to conferences and working with industry. Most importantly, you must consider the broader social, environmental, and economic implications of your project—the human practices aspect.

“One thing iGEM really focuses on is that discovery and science are only part of the story. If you want to solve global issues, science isn’t always enough. You really need partnership and understanding between scientists, bioethicists, industry, government, and involvement from your community — there’s so much that needs to come together to make these solutions precipitate into something that makes a tangible change in the world. iGEM really helped me understand that and it got me even more excited that biology could be leveraged help people and the planet.”

Searching for a different experience, Vigar left his studies to work with an NGO in Uganda. The project involved bringing together infrastructure for solar panels, batteries and electricity to build computer labs in rural areas of Uganda and then train computer teachers so they could carry out computer lessons. When he returned to Canada and the U of L, he started working with Dr. Hans-Joachim (H-J) Wieden (chemistry & biochemistry) at the Alberta RNA Research and Training Institute (ARRTI). That got him involved in an international project to understand how bacterial cells regulate protein production — a project that would ultimately make biology easier to engineer. He moved to Germany to work in Dr. Jörg Vogel’s lab at the Institute for Molecular Infection Biology to carry out experiments. This project also involves a biophysics component; he carries out those experiments at the Diamond Particle Accelerator in Oxford, UK.

In addition, Vigar is a delegate to the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity (UNCBD) with iGEM. He represents iGEM at Conference of the Parties meetings, the last of which was in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. He’s also a Bio-Belt ambassador through SynBioBeta innovation network in San Francisco, USA. As a representative of Alberta, he works to attract economic development and investment in biotechnology to southern Alberta.

Vigar plans to pursue doctoral studies and is considering a school in the U.S. Until then, he’ll be working on finishing the projects he’s involved with now.

“My experience at the U of L has been very transformative,” he says. “As a scientist, the liberal education philosophy has really enhanced my degree by not just learning how to do great science but learning how to being a scientist. So much more goes into that than lab work. It’s important the liberal education philosophy be carried over to grad school, too. H-J really focuses on providing a well-rounded graduate experience. Most of his students are involved in some other venture apart from their lab work.”

Paying it forward

trevor.kenney — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 21:17:09 +0000

Inspired by the professors who helped him when he was a PhD student in Germany, Dr. Hans-Joachim (HJ) Wieden decided from the moment he arrived at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, he would pay it forward by similarly helping students. Not only does he give personally to the Supporting Our Students (SOS) campaign, but he also developed a co-curricular symposium that is now supported by the campaign.

In 2007, Wieden initiated the Chinook Symposium in Chemistry and Biochemistry after realizing that students in his department had very limited opportunities to share their work with their peers.

What started as an annual poster competition now has three external judges and an $1,800 prize pool, with $300 for first-place posters and $150 for second place in four different categories. Participating in the Chinook Symposium has become a real career booster for the students.

While he facilitated the competition, Wieden credits his department colleagues for their enthusiasm and financial support.

"We raised $15,000 inside the department, so we now have money to run the contest for the next ten years," says Wieden.

The Symposium also provides a great opportunity for scientists and students to interact with each other, helping to build a vibrant research and training community. Now supporters of the SOS campaign can direct their money towards the initiative as well.

By now, you've probably heard of the SOS campaign, where faculty and staff can direct their own money to support student scholarships and bursaries. SOS has raised more than $1.5 million since its inception in 2005.

For Wieden, the opportunity to involve undergraduate students in research projects provided a major attraction to Lethbridge.

"One of the reasons I came to this university was because of the huge involvement of undergraduates in research," says Wieden.

If Wieden's name seems familiar, it's because you may have heard it often. In 2010 he won a Distinguished Teaching Award and one of three Students' Union Teaching Excellence Awards. He also leads the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ's busy International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) undergraduate research team, which regularly places alongside schools like Yale, Harvard and MIT in the world's premiere synthetic biology competition.

Every year, Wieden employs several students in his research lab, and says that scholarships like those supported by SOS are key to helping students acquire that often-transformative early lab experience.

"We need more scholarships so we have students getting to choose to go into research labs in the summer instead of flipping burgers," he says.

This story first appeared in the March 2013 issue of the Legend. For a look at the full issue in a flipbook format, follow this link.

Wieden earns Distinguished Teaching Award

trevor.kenney — Thu, 19 May 2011 16:35:24 +0000

In the manner of a week, Dr. Hans-Joachim (HJ) Wieden learned he'd be receiving two teaching awards this spring – one from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ and another from the students. It's safe to say his philosophy, and the subsequent delivery on that promise, has hit the mark.

"It was a good week, it kind of raised the hair on my forearms," says Wieden, a chemist by nature and professor of physical biochemistry.

"It's cool. A lot of the teaching I do does not involve formal teaching evaluations," he says. "I only instruct two classes a year and it needs to be that way. If I had a teaching load of four classes, there isn't going to be any research coming out of this lab, or I wouldn't be able to teach independent study students or help with the iGEM program."

Dr. HJ Wieden is most at home in his lab, working one-on-one with students.

It begs the question then, how does Wieden get noticed as one of the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ's best teachers, winning the 2010 Distinguished Teaching Award and one of three Students' Union Teaching Excellence Awards, when there are few metrics with which to measure his performance? It comes from his students, who have made a point of letting people know just how influential Wieden has been on their academic experience.

A native of Germany, Wieden learned early what manner of teaching he found most effective, well before he ever knew he'd be a professor.

"The experience I had as an undergrad taught me something," says Wieden.
His first exposure to post-secondary studies came at Heinrich-Heine ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ in Dusseldorf where he was thrust into an introductory chemistry class as one of 1,200 students in an 800-seat auditorium. With no opportunity for student-teacher interaction, the only way for students to succeed was if they were extremely self-motivated or exceptional learners.

"I hated that and it almost made me stop attending university," says Wieden.

He, of course, made it through, spurred on by a keen interest in biochemistry and physical chemistry.

"When I learned about that, I got excited," he says. "I liked the idea of small molecular machines doing stuff in your cells, and that we can, by retro-engineering them to learn how they are designed, help us to build molecular machines with novel functions. It's like taking a car apart and putting it back together."

Wieden is animated and excitable when he talks biochemistry, and it's a palpable enthusiasm that he brings to his students. While studying for his PhD at Witten/Herdecke ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ (Germany's first privately-funded university), he gained his first exposure to a different manner of teaching and learning.

"What I liked was the direct contact, you could see students going to labs doing hands-on stuff and doing research right away," he says. "I think those two different approaches to teaching inspired me."

When he found an opening at the U of L in the back of the magazine NATURE, he investigated the post and quickly found it suited his ideals.

"I got the job, got here and really saw the place. Everybody is friendly to each other, the size is right and I felt it was a good place where I could actually do something," he says. "In the bigger schools, you are often disconnected from the students. I have colleagues from these institutions who don't know how to get grad students because they have no teaching contact.

"The possibility to actually shape something here was a big reason I saw this as a good place to be."

He excels as an independent study supervisor and since 2007 has been involved in the highly successful iGEM program as well. In each endeavour, he relishes the opportunity to draw the best out of his students.

"I look at a class of 30 students with 30 individuals and 30 different brains," says Wieden. "There are probably 30 different ways to get into their brains and teach them something, and individualized learning allows us to do that – that's a very cool thing.

"There's always a way to connect to a topic. It could be the most awesome topic in the world but if the teacher doesn't tell it in a way that sparks you, it will never be interesting and that's what we try and do."

The awards are, to some degree, a validation, but on another level, they reflect the outcome of his process.

"It gives me a feeling that there is recognition for the time I've spent with individualized teaching in and outside of the classroom, and it shows that the students who went through the program are aware of that," says Wieden. "I've told my students that they have to give back, if you like something say it, and if you dislike something, say it."

The students have obviously spoken.

This story first appeared in the Legend. For a look at the Legend in a flipbook format, follow this link.

UNews - Hans-Joachim (HJ) Wieden

Path of learning has taken Justin Vigar around the world

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Paying it forward

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Wieden earns Distinguished Teaching Award

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