Dr. Peter Grutter, a physicist studying and developing atomic force microscopy (AFM), takes this episode to walk us through the varying facets of his work. We begin by understanding how manipulating the properties of nanoscale materials can alter their behaviours in ways unintuitive to us macro-scale beings, despite them following the same basic universal ruleset as everything else: physics. The episode continues to explore Dr. Grutter’s work, which involves using AFM to measure Nanonewton-scale forces or evaluate the shape of Nanometer-scale objects. He explains how this cutting-edge tool is applicable to a plethora of fields, including microbiology. Tune in to learn how physics is contributing to the fight against cancer at scales smaller than an atom!

This special episode of STEMcast is cut from a seminar presented to participants of miniGEM, a mini version of the iGEM competition that McGill’s iGEM team runs for high school students across Canada. We learn about the judges’ paths into synthetic biology, and we hear their opinions on various topics, like ‘how important is the visual component of an iGEM project?’, or ‘what features do award-winning projects have that others don’t?’. Tune in to step up your iGEM game!

On this episode of STEMcast, Dr. Julia Freeman walks us through her experience working with farmers in India to understand the impact that modern biotechnology is having on both a personal and industrial level. She explains that biotech has more complicated questions associated with it than what most sensationalist coverage about it (both pro- and anti-biotech) makes apparent. Where is biotech a solution, and where does it need legislative protection? How to protect farmers health and economic well-being while taking advantage of these technologies? Are farmers choosing these seeds, or is biotech being forced upon them? Hear an on-field perspective in this episode of STEMcast.

This STEMcast episode, we are joined by Dr. Jay Nadeau, an astrophysicist currently part of the search for extraterrestrial life and a key founder of McGill’s first iGEM team. We hear about how Dr. Nadeau’s career led her to McGill and how her physics background complements her biological work, before discussing the thermodynamic probability of life arising on other planets/moons, and how humanity might go about finding it.

Fungi enthusiast and expert Dr. Shireef Darwish gives us a window into the third class of life on earth (after plants and animals) — fungi. After falling in love with these organisms early in his career, Dr. Darwish has experimented with all sorts of fungi-related work, including teaching, lab work, and even foraging for rare fungi (often to take home and eat!). In this episode, Dr. Darwish explains the ubiquitous role fungi play in the life cycles of both plants and animals, how these organisms can be used medicinally, and even the chemistry behind fungi-based hallucinogens.

In this episode of STEMcast, we join Simon Daoust to discuss the intersection of ecology, evolution, and medicine. We hear about everything from mind-controlling parasites to sustainable ecosystem design, and explore questions like “will there ever be a cure to cancer?”, or “why are Homo Sapiens the only human-like species to have avoided extinction?”. Dr. Daoust’s broad expertise provides for a thrilling and humorous deep-dive into all of these.

In this episode of STEMcast, we join Dr. Nagissa Mahmoudi — a biogeochemist at McGill University — in exploring how microbes live and thrive in various extremes. We hear how Dr. Mahmoudi fell in love with biology, and how she spends her days now as an educator and researcher. She provides wisdom on how events such as oil spills can affect their ecosystems’ microbiomes, and we hear an expert’s predictions on the possibilities of life outside of Earth. All this and more on this episode of STEMcast.

Join us on this episode of STEMCast as we explore topics ranging from NeuroAI to student entrepreneurship with Yohaï-Eliel Berreby, a current Ph.D. student at McGill University's School of Biomedical Sciences. He is a CAMBAM and Childress Fellow and has received many prestigious awards alongside his doctoral studies in one of McGill's most renowned programs. Besides pursuing NeuroAI research, he has also won multiple high-profile hackathons (e.g., ReadyTraderGo Algorithmic Market Making Competition, Meta's AI Safety Hackathon, etc.) and is the acting CEO of ShapeShifters, an IT consulting firm based in Paris. How has he managed to balance so many commitments? What advice would he give to students? Hear it all on this episode of STEMCast.

In this episode of STEMCast, we will be diving into the world of artificial intelligence with Professor Aaron Courville, with topics spanning from Game Theory to Explainable AI. Prof. Courville is from the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research at Université de Montréal. He is one of the founding members of Mila and a Canada CIFAIR AI Chair.

Alongside Ian Goodfellow and Yoshua Bengio, he co-wrote the seminal textbook on deep learning: aptly named Deep Learning. His current research focuses on developing deep learning models and methods, with a particular interest in reinforcement learning, deep generative models, and multimodal ML in the domains of language and vision.

In this episode, we dive into the wonders of the depths of Earth's oceans and the reaches of empty space to explore the role that microorganisms play in life everywhere with Dr. Nagissa Mahmoudi, a specialist in Geomicrobiology and Assistant Professor at McGill in the School of Environment and at Trottier Space Institute. Dr. Mahmoudi received her bachelor of science in integrative biology at the University of Toronto and her PhD in Environmental Geochemistry at McMaster University and has since had an incredibly successful career in geomicrobiology academia, with over a decade of attention-grabbing publications under her belt.