A new semester arrives for the math.epi.lab

With fall comes an opportunity to review our progress over the past year and plan for the coming academic year. September always feels much more like the "New Year" to me than January and I find myself spending time looking at the literature on productivity, and strategic planning in the hopes of  implementing strategies to work "smarter" instead of "harder" this semester. With that comes my renewed desire to have our website, blog, and social media streams more active and as a group we are committing to making that happen.

Today we gathered as a team to discuss our research, and to plan for the coming academic year. There have been lots of changes over the summer.

1) We are really pleased to be welcoming Emma and Gabrielle back to the team. 

2) Salah has accepted a CIHR Health Systems Impact Fellowship to start a joint postdoc in collaboration with the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) so we will likely see a little bit less of him this semester as he begins to make the transition to working out of the PHAC office here in Guelph.. 

3) We have bid farewell to Kelsey Spence and Ariel Brunn. 

3) We are welcoming four new graduate students to our team this semester. Their profiles will be going up on the team page of the website next week but we are really excited to have Wendy, Elissa, Roksolana, and Haley joining the team!

Dr. Amy Greer and Ariel Brunn after Ariel  finished her MSc defence in August

Dr. Amy Greer, Dr. Kelsey Spence, and Dr. Terri O'Sullivan after Kelsey successfully defended her PhD dissertation in August

A blog post from Enise about her trip with World Vets

From June 29 to July 6, I had the chance to volunteer with World Vets in Granada, Nicaragua. World Vets is an organization which provides free veterinary services to pet owners in developing countries. The days were packed with hours spent at the World Vets clinic; around 250 cats/dogs and 80 horses were helped by our team in the form of vaccinations, deworming, spay/neuter and physical exams. In our spare time, we got to experience the beautiful city of Granada: the food, music, salsa dancing and volcanos. It was so rewarding to be able to travel, learn and help the local community!  

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Here is a photo of myself and two friends (also from the University of Guelph) holding up our flag on Canada Day in Nicaragua.

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Here is a photo of myself and one of the cutest patients of the clinic, Christian the puppy.

Big news for a math.epi.lab alum!

Congratulations go out to Beverly Goh, a former undergraduate research assistant in our group. Beverly will be furthering her studies in the DVM program here at the Ontario Veterinary College in September 2016. Congratulations Beverly (class of 2020)! 

We are hiring!

Have you just completed your PhD? We are looking for a postdoctoral fellow to join the math.epi.lab! Read more here. 

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The Math.Epi.Lab at the Canadian Association of Veterinary Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine

The CAVEPM conference rotates between the Canadian veterinary colleges and this year the meeting was hosted here at the Ontario Veterinary College. Our group presented three oral presentation and three posters. It was also a great way for our new summer students to begin their summer research experience. 

Enjoying a sunny lunch outside on the lawn. Just missing Gabrielle and Emma.

Kelsey starting her talk on equine networks. 

Luz giving a great talk about her field work in Mexico. 

Join the new Community of Interest (CoI) in Disease Modeling @ OVC

My research group is facilitating a new Community of Interest (CoI) in Disease Modeling at the University of Guelph. This is an interdisciplinary group that will meet once per week to discuss recently published papers, work in progress by group members as well as a variety of other topics of interest to the disease modeling community. We are hoping to have participants from across the University as well as local, provincial and federal government scientists who are actively working in this area to join us for discussion. We are not focused on any one specific methodology or application but rather on building a collaborative group to support learning and research within the broad area of disease modeling. Further details regarding the day and time of group meetings as well as resources for the meetings will be distributed shortly. If you are interested in joining the group please contact me by email and I can add you to the distribution list.