UBC President Santa Ono speaking at Research Day of the Centre for Blood Research. Photo credit: Kitty Liu
On his second day in office, UBC President Santa Ono paid a visit to the Centre for Blood Research, meeting students who have spent their summers working in the labs of its scientists.
Dr. Ono arrived at the Life Sciences Centre to announce the winner of the prize for best oral presentation, and to share some of his memories – both exhilarating and embarrassing – as a young scientist.
“This is what universities are really all about,” he said.
He described the Centre for Blood Research as the “largest of its kind in North America and unique in Canada,” and as “something that is really close to me,” having devoted part of his career to exploring the properties of lymphocytes, including T-cells and B-cells, as well as mast cells.
Dr. Ono, formerly President of the University of Cincinnati, specializes in the immune system, eye inflammation and age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness. He and his research team are working to develop a blood test that could identify biomarkers in people who are progressing toward macular degeneration.
Despite assuming the leadership of the university the day before, this was not Dr. Ono’s first time in the Life Sciences Centre – he had toured it about a decade ago, while being recruited for a faculty position at UBC. Although he didn’t end up at UBC until now, he said the experience introduced him to the “high quality of research that takes place in the Faculty of Medicine.”
Dr. Ono praised the Centre for Blood Research’s efforts to educate and train future scientists and clinicians, and said he envied the mostly undergraduate students for being able to spend their summers conducting experiments. He fondly recalled his own summer internship, while an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, at the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
“Those were some of the most joyful days of my entire career,” he said. “I’m sure many of you were much more successful than I was.” He went on to explain how he damaged a centrifuge in those early days, earning the wrath of his lab supervisor.
The centre’s summer students, on the day that Dr. Ono’s appointment as UBC’s 15 president was announced, sent him an invitation via Twitter to the Research Day event. He responded within minutes.
UBC President Santa Ono (in centre, with white shirt) surrounded by the Centre for Blood Research’s summer students. Photo credit: Kitty Liu
“In a big university, it’s not so common that direct and personal communication lines are established between the President and an otherwise faceless group of students,” said Ed Conway, Director of the Centre for Blood Research. “To me, that translates into a resounding commitment from the highest level, to support and encourage our students to achieve excellence. I know that here, these students and their supervisors at all levels, are similarly committed.”
Dr. Ono, after presenting the award for best oral presentation to Evelyn Liu, a student at UBC and the B.C. Institute of Technology who worked in the lab of Professor Kelly McNagny, examined some of the posters, asking detailed questions of the students about their research.
But first, he posed for the customary group photo – surrounded by a dozen students who adopted his sartorial preference for bow ties.