Orders of Magnitude

This week, our guest is Quinn Abram. Quinn is a PhD candidate in the department of biochemistry at McGill University. His research seeks to better understand the mechanism whereby the Zika virus can replicate in our cells. Quinn is also involved as co-president of the Biochemistry Graduate Student Society (BGSS).

The first half of the podcast is dedicated to building a strong understanding of what viruses are, how they evolve and whether they are evil! We use the example of the Zika virus to illustrate the ingenuity and sneakiness of these tiny ‘’obligate intracellular parasites’’. At the end of the podcast, we delve into how the structure formed at the ends of the Zika genetic information are vital for its ability to replicate, and how we could disrupt that structure’s function with a drug.

Cette semaine au podcast, nous recevons Younes Rhazi. Détentaire d’un baccalauréat en économie et politique, Younes complète présentement sa maîtrise en affaires publiques et internationales à l’Université de Montréal. Il a un intérêt marqué pour les inégalités sociales et les solutions pour remédier à ces dernières. Nous avons discuté des dernières études sur la semaine de quatre jours et sur le revenu minimum garanti. L’économie et la politique sont des sujets complexes, et Younes a su nous les vulgariser avec brio, en se basant sur des données empiriques!

This week on the Podcast, our guest is Maya Nikolova. Maya is currently a molecular biology Master’s student at Université de Montréal. Her research focuses on the proteomics of RAS and RAS-SF, two families of proteins involved in cancer development and progression.

Since proteins are a complex topic, we focused the first half of the discussion on explaining what proteins are, and the vast array of things they can do! Then, we explored different facets of Maya’s project, going over a few cutting-edge techniques that are currently used by scientists to study proteins.

Cette semaine au podcast, notre invité est Simon Goulet. Étudiant au doctorat en rechercherche et intervention en psychologie à l'UQÀM, Simon est également un activiste écologiste. Il nous a fait découvrir l'étude des émotions que nous vivons tous lorsque nous sommes mis face à la crise climatique actuelle. Cette discussion est enrichissante car elle nous sort de notre carcan de sciences quantitatives et nous force à contempler la complexité d'étudier qualitativement des émotions, l'une des choses des plus subjectives qui soient! 

This week on the Podcast, our guest is Slater Covenden. Slater is starting his Master's degree in mechanical engineering at McGill University. Throughout his undergraduate degree at Concordia University, where he studied aerospace engineering, Slater was part of the rocket division of Space Concordia, acting as the head of research and development in his latter year.

Among many other topics, we discussed Slater's experience at Space Concordia, the challenges of going to space, exciting space exploration projects and his new research project on metal fuels, or like Slater would describe them: ''Metal Powders, Baby!''