I was very happy to be one of 21 Canadian faculty members to participate in the 2014 Science Leadership Program, organized by Dr. Ray Jayawardhana and the University of Toronto’s Science Engagement team. It was a two-day leadership/communication/engagement boot camp! Check out Elaine Smith’s UoT news story about this (see the picture in the link; I am the bold guy on the right, trying to balance a hula hop with 10 other fellows!). It was a great experience… Among other things, i have a lovely memory of 21 super-smart professors throwing a pink tennis ball around the room… with their eyes!

Amro

Happy to report that Brock Harpur successfully completed his doctoral preliminary exam two weeks ago. Congrats Brock!

… it started with a trip to Edmonton, Alberta, to attend the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists’ annual meeting. We managed to outline the research priorities for Apiculture in Canada over the next few years, and I gave a talk on the genetics of honey bees.

Then back to Toronto for a week, then off to the Gordon Research Conference on Genes and Behaviour held at Galveston Texas for another week. There i rubbed shoulders with some of my citation heroes and gave a seminar on bee population genomics and behaviour.

Back to Toronto on Friday [after a 12 hour limbo @ Houston Airport], then delivered a public seminar for the Royal Canadian Institute for the Advancement of Science on Sunday. The talk was a great experience. I also got a kick from seeing my name before the amazing Canadian Astronaut, Colonel Chris Hadfield, who was slated to speak the week after me (he had cancelled earlier, but after the brochure was printed).  I showed my family – i told them that i was speaking before that ‘Guy from Space’ 🙂 I actually feel extremely fortunate to get invited to speak at such a prestigious event, with an amazing line up of speakers, which include York U’s incoming dean of science, Ray Jay!

Then, I left Toronto Sunday night for a much needed mini vacation in the Caribbean over reading break.

That is more than 15,000 KM traveled over 30 days!… i think i am going to hang around Toronto for the next little while.

Amro

 

Very happy to report that, after months of hard work, we’ve just heard that our study will be published in PNAS – a top science journal. Can’t tell you much about the article now – it is embargoed until published – but it is very very neat in my humble and biased opinion. We had a little mini-celebration with PNAS cake… Yum! 🙂

I would like to welcome our new Postdoc Dr. Alivia Dey to the lab. Alivia obtained her PhD from the University of Toronto where she studied the population genetics of Caenorhabditis with Dr Asher Cutter. Check out Alivia’s recent PNAS paper on hyperdiversity in nematodes! She will be working on honey bee population genomics here.
Welcome Alivia!

Amro

Can you spot Brock, Daria, Jen, Lior and Bahar. They are participating in Diane Borsato’s Your Temper, My Weather: a 4 hour – 100 beekeeper group meditation for Toronto’s Nuit Blanche

You can’t do a great citizen-science project without great citizens!  We recently asked  Beekeepers to collected a few workers from their colonies for a national survey of the genetics of Canadian honey bees.  We’ve received back more than 500 bees from every province; we’ve even got bees from Yukon!  Check out one beekeeper’s innovative sampling protocol here.  Thanks Greg.

Amro

July was Dr. Clement Kent’s last month as postdoc in the lab; he will start a new position as a Senior Scientist at Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Farm Research Campus – probably one of the best places in the world to do neuroscience at the moment.  Clement was the first member to join my lab; he joined as a NSERC Postdoc fellow.  Congrats Clement; you’ll be missed!

Hello.

We are looking for beekeepers to participate in a research project on the genetics of Canadian honey bee stocks funded by the Canadian Honey Council’s Bee Research Fund. If you are interested, sign up at the following website www.yorku.ca/honeybee  Participation is easy! We will send you a labeled prepaid envelop with collection tubes, and you send it back to us with a few dead bees from your yard.  We are hoping to sample honey bees from coast to coast; commercial beekeepers, bee breeders, and scientists / hobbyists are welcome.

Please see www.yorku.ca/honeybee for more information and to sign up.

Thanks for helping us with our project,

Amro Zayed

Congratulation to Brock Harpur for winning the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists’ student merit award for 2013! The award recognizes outstanding achievement in the study of apiculture. More on the award here.  Also see this news post from the Ontario Beekeepers’ Association
Congrats Brock – well deserved!