Pimjai Pimbaotham stands in front of a scientific poster illustrating her work during a visiting research fellowship at UBC Okanagan.

Pimjai Pimbaotham was not looking for the origins of life.

At Ubon Ratchathani University in her native Thailand, she studied catalysis, or the science of speeding up chemical reactions.

When she arrived at UBC Okanagan in 2024 on a visiting research fellowship, she was handed a project examining how the building blocks of life might’ve assembled four billion years ago. She found it disorienting.

“It was difficult for me to see the bigger picture,” Pimbaotham says.

What helped was a movie.

“One of my favourite movies is The Martian,” she says. “The story follows an astronaut on Mars who studies the environment and soil of the planet while trying to survive. Even though it’s fictional, it made me think about the possibility of life beyond Earth and whether life could have started somewhere else in the universe.”

Two years later, Pimbaotham is first author on a paper that reached the cover of Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry, one of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s flagship journals..

Chemistry before biology

An artist’s rendering of the chemistry at the heart of Pimbaotham’s paper, which was featured on the cover of Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry.

The question the paper takes on is deceptively simple: how did life’s molecules stick together?

Proteins are the machinery of living things. They’re chains of amino acids linked by peptide bonds. Before there was any biology to do the assembling, those bonds had to form on their own, somewhere on a lifeless, hostile planet Earth.

Working with Dr. Robert Szilagyi, a computational chemist with UBC Okanagan’s Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science, Pimbaotham mapped how two of the simplest amino acids join up and curl around to bite their own tails, forming rings—not in a lab, but on a computer simulating where every atom and electron sits at each instant of the reaction.

“Computational chemistry helps us understand what happens at the molecular level,” she says. “It allows us to investigate whether certain chemical reactions could have taken place on Earth before life existed.”

The team tested how the reaction behaves under conditions that would have been common on our younger planet: varying acidity levels, crushing pressure and heat. What set their approach apart was treating hydrogen atoms as quantum clouds capable of tunnelling through barriers that classical chemistry says should stop them.

The work does more than satisfy curiosity. It could also point toward cheaper ways to build complex molecules using abundant, low-cost ingredients. The team is now testing whether common materials like mineral surfaces and metal-bearing rocks could act as natural workbenches for these reactions, potentially opening new routes to manufacturing valuable chemicals and biological molecules.

Passing it forward

Pimjai Pimbaotham (centre) poses with academic supervisors Drs. Siriporn Jungsuttiwong and Robert Szilagyi.

In Dr. Szilagyi’s lab, Pimbaotham found herself in another unique position, as mentor. UBCO undergraduate student John K. Villanueva built and benchmarked part of the quantum computing code the peptide project required.

“Working with John was one of the best parts of my time in Canada,” she says. “One of my favourite moments was watching him present his research poster. I was proud to see how much he had improved and how confident he had become. Seeing someone grow through research is one of the best parts of being a mentor.”

The timing of Pimbaotham’s visit and the remarkable research progress led to presentations at UBC Okanagan, the Western Canadian Undergraduate Chemistry Conference and the Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition in Ottawa, alongside graduate and undergraduate students from the Szilagyi lab.

Pimbaotham’s path to Kelowna began at a science exchange she didn’t attend.

In 2024, her thesis advisor, Dr. Siriporn Jungsuttiwong, took part in the Sakura Science Program in Japan, hosted by Dr. Masanori Tachikawa of Yokohama City University. Among the researchers she met there was Dr. Szilagyi.

Dr. Jungsuttiwong hoped Pimbaotham could do a research exchange in Canada, but the cost of a year abroad was beyond her funding. Dr. Szilagyi pointed to the Canada-ASEAN Scholarships and Educational Exchanges for Development program, designed for students from Southeast Asia.

It was a conversation between Pimbaotham, her supervisors at UBCO and in Thailand, and Dr. Tachikawa that led to the research breakthrough.

Opening doors for researchers

The Visiting International Research Student (VIRS) program enabled Pimbaotham to conduct research full-time at UBC Okanagan.

The Visiting International Research Student (VIRS) program enabled Pimbaotham to conduct research full-time. The program welcomes undergraduate, graduate and graduate-equivalent students from universities around the world, as well as participants in UBC-recognized bridging programs like DAAD Rise Worldwide and Mitacs Globalink.

“VIRS has been part of how UBC brings students and researchers together for a number of years now, on our Okanagan and Vancouver campuses,” says Dr. Philipp Reichert, Director of the Global Engagement Office. “It creates opportunities for talented students to contribute to meaningful research while enabling our faculty to collaborate with emerging researchers from around the world.”

Through VIRS, students undertake full-time research under the supervision of a UBC faculty member while remaining enrolled at their home institution. There is no requirement to enrol in UBC coursework or pursue a UBC degree.

“What’s great about VIRS is how often it’s just the beginning,” says Dr. Dana Lowton, Assistant Director of the UBCO Go Global program. “Students come for a research placement, but the connections they build don’t end when they return to their home institutions. Those research relationships often continue for years, and we regularly see former VIRS participants return to UBC to pursue graduate degrees.”

Learn more through the UBC Okanagan Global Engagement Office.

The post A movie about Mars led one student across the world and back in time appeared first on UBC's Okanagan News.

Melius MicroBiomics Inc., a biotechnology company spun out of UBC Okanagan, is preparing to take its engineered microbial therapeutic to human trials in Australia this summer.

A probiotic bioengineered by UBC Okanagan researchers to thrive in the inflamed gut is set to enter human clinical trials, capping a decade-long effort to turn a beneficial bacterium into a treatment for inflammatory bowel disease.

The strategy, detailed in a proof-of-concept study published in Gastroenterology, tackles a stubborn problem in microbiome medicine: getting beneficial bacteria to survive in a gut that’s actively inflamed.

An inflamed gut is why probiotics have largely failed to produce clinical effects, as UBCO’s Drs. Deanna Gibson and Andrea Verdugo-Meza have previously demonstrated.

Trials are scheduled to begin in Australia this August.

“We worked for over a decade to get to this point,” says Dr. Gibson, a professor of biology in the Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science and the study’s senior author. “Probiotics tend to wash out of the gut exactly when patients need them most—during a flare. We wanted to flip that and engineer the probiotic to use inflammation as fuel.”

The research focuses on Escherichia coli Nissle 1917, a probiotic that has been safely used in humans to treat intestinal conditions for more than a century.

On its own, it may help keep ulcerative colitis in remission but does little once active disease sets in. The UBCO team added a set of genes that lets the bacterium use a compound produced during inflammation as fuel, giving it a competitive advantage precisely when the gut is inflamed.

The study was carried out by Dr. Verdugo-Meza, who completed her PhD in Gibson’s lab, and Sandeep Gill, a former MSc student in Dr. Gibson’s lab.

Dr. Verdugo-Meza led the work to understand and validate how the technology functions, conducting immune cell and live animal studies at the heart of the research.

“What’s encouraging is the breadth of the effect,” says Dr. Verdugo-Meza. “We saw improvements in the gut barrier, the immune response and the microbial community—not just one pathway. And it worked with low, infrequent dosing and without antibiotics.”

The modified strain bloomed during active colitis in mice, then receded as the animals recovered. It outperformed both the unmodified probiotic and standard first-line drugs for mild to moderate ulcerative colitis.

In one chronic model, untreated mice and those given the standard probiotic developed severe colitis, while no mice in the engineered-probiotic group did by the 16-week mark.

The strain is patented by UBC and licensed to Melius MicroBiomics, a UBC Okanagan spin-off company co-founded by Dr. Gibson.

The UBCO live biotherapeutic appears to strengthen the gut’s protective barrier, shift the immune environment toward a calmer state and nudge the resident microbiome toward more beneficial bacteria.

The pending human trials come after testing in several mouse models and lab-grown human colon tissue. The researchers have also completed a successful porcine trial to support human regulatory approvals.

The researchers indicate the approach could open a broader path for microbiome medicine.

“If we can design microbes to colonize exactly where and when they’re needed,” says Dr. Gibson, “we open up a whole category of treatments that work with the body’s biology rather than against it.”

The post Researchers engineer a probiotic that’s heading to human trials appeared first on UBC's Okanagan News.

UBC Okanagan hosted a BC government delegation for a site tour highlighting wildfire technology, research and prescribed fire training.

Cameras that can detect wildfires as soon as they ignite, sensors that track local weather data and person-to-person training on how to use fire to build resilience were on display for a BC government delegation at UBC Okanagan recently.

The visit comes as a recent Senate of Canada report identified wildfire as an existential challenge for the country. With the BC interior at the epicentre of Canadian wildfire, according to the report, UBC’s Okanagan campus is in a unique position to lead the national development of the next generation of research, technologies and strategies that mitigate the risks.

“For many parts of Canada, wildfire is an increasingly common occurrence, even in regions that rarely, if ever, had seen it before,” says Dr. Lesley Cormack, Principal and Deputy Vice-Chancellor for UBC Okanagan, who hosted the demonstration. “For the Okanagan, fire has long been part of the natural cycle of the ecosystem. Extreme wildfire events are becoming more intense and widespread, however, and there is ever greater need for the leading expertise and direct experience of a top-tier university like UBC.”

The delegation included Niki Sharma, Deputy Premier and Attorney General; Kelly Greene, Minister of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness; Spencer Chandra Herbert, Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation; Rick Glumac, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence and New Technologies; and Darlene Rotchford, Parliamentary Secretary for Armed Forces Development and Veterans Affairs.

Students and researchers highlighted campus-led innovations, including an AI-powered wildfire camera network being developed with the BC Wildfire Service and a low-cost network of internet-connected sensors that refine local wildfire weather-risk forecasting.

They also showcased the Canadian Prescribed Fire Training Program, Canada’s first national prescribed fire training initiative, which trains practitioners to restore fire resilience to the landscape and aligns directly with the Senate report findings.

“There are more than 30 researchers at UBC Okanagan working with partners across the province and the country to drive advances in wildfire mitigation and management,” says Dr. Lael Parrott, Professor of Sustainability and Dean of the Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science. “The urgent need for this work is growing every day due to the increased risks that communities are facing, not just in Canada but around the world.”

Dr. Parrott pointed to collaborations such as those with BC Wildfire and the First Nations’ Emergency Services Society of British Columbia as prime examples of how researchers and practitioners are combining Indigenous knowledge, cultural burning practices and the latest techniques to help communities across Canada learn to live with this new reality.

“We have built great momentum in this space, and wildfire resilience is now a core priority for UBC, but there are still considerable gaps that our campus is ideally positioned to fill,” Dr. Parrott adds, pointing to investments like a dedicated Canadian wildfire research facility, high-performance computing to power the machine learning algorithms behind the sensor networks, and hands-on learning spaces for prescribed fire practitioners.

That momentum now has a next step.

UBC is designing a dedicated space on the Okanagan campus to house its wildfire research and training with the intention that it becomes a home for the kind of work highlighted in the demonstration.

Among the technology showcased was a province-wide network of wildfire-detection cameras being built with the BC Wildfire Service. Modelled on a similar network in California, the platform streams landscape views and uses computer-vision AI developed on campus to spot smoke early.

This public safety platform gives responders better situational awareness, enables faster decision-making and fewer costly smoke-chasing dispatches.

The delegation also saw the low-cost weather sensors developed by Dr. Mathieu Bourbonnais’ Fire Ecology and Remote Sensing Lab. BC’s weather station network is too sparse in many areas to capture wildfire risk that can vary sharply from one valley to the next.

This creates gaps that can lead to under-resourced initial attacks when risk is misjudged. The sensors pair locally relevant data with machine learning to close those gaps and sharpen wildfire-risk forecasts

Living with fire over the long-term also means restoring resilience to the landscape, and prescribed fire is central to that future. With the support of an $8-million donation from the Weston Family Foundation, UBC Okanagan’s Prescribed Fire Training Program will equip practitioners across the country, including the Canadian Armed Forces, to plan and apply prescribed fire safely.

“For most of my career, much of the wildland fire community was focused on suppression,” says Jane Park, the program’s manager and a former wildland fire incident commander with Parks Canada. “More and more agencies now recognize that the right fire, in the right place, at the right time, is one of the best tools we have for making our forests and communities more resilient.

“This program, once fully developed, will give practitioners all across the country the training to plan and implement prescribed fire safely and well.”

The post BC ministers find the wildfire tech, training Canada needs now at UBC Okanagan appeared first on UBC's Okanagan News.

Kamalpreet Kaur crossed the stage at UBC Okanagan convocation Friday with her nursing degree and the Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Inclusion, Democracy and Reconciliation.

When Kamalpreet Kaur arrived in Canada as a student nine years ago, nursing wasn’t an option. Without permanent residency, she couldn’t apply. So, she waited six years, earned her citizenship and then earned her degree.

On Friday, Kaur crossed the stage at UBC Okanagan’s spring convocation to receive her Bachelor of Science in Nursing, and the Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Inclusion, Democracy and Reconciliation, awarded to the graduating student with the strongest academic record who also contributes to the community in those areas.

“I didn’t feel it was possible for me, for a first-generation immigrant to receive such an honour,” said Kaur, who came to UBCO from Punjab, India. “But it was magical.”

The award reflects more than academic achievement. Kaur has served as an alternate representative for the British Columbia Nurses Union’s young nurses’ network, advocating for racialized and underrepresented nurses in clinical environments.

She is also developing a peer support platform for new nurses. A space for recent graduates to ask questions, share experiences and find guidance as they navigate their first years in practice.

Kaur plans to pursue a nurse practitioner designation starting next year. Politics, she says, is a longer-term goal.

Until then, she’s celebrating with her parents, who travelled from India to watch her cross the stage, and her husband, Balkarn Singh.

“They’re my biggest support system. Without them, I would not have been able to complete my studies,” Kaur says. “There have been so many things I’ve faced here, being the first girl in my family to come to Canada. Without them, it wouldn’t have been possible.”

Kaur was among more than 2,600 students who received their degrees at UBC’s Okanagan campus this week, wrapping up one of the university’s strongest academic years yet.

With the Class of 2026, the campus has officially surpassed 30,000 alumni since opening its doors 21 years ago.

Governor General’s Gold Medal

Jon Corbett received the Governor General’s Gold Medal—the most prestigious academic honour for a graduating student—following the successful defence of his doctoral dissertation, Ancestral Code: Grounding Indigenous Computing in nehiyaw Epistemology.

Corbett is a doctoral student in the digital arts and humanities in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies. His dissertation develops a nehiyaw (Plains Cree) epistemological framework for Indigenous computing. His work includes a syllabic programming typeface, a nehiyaw-based programming language, an integrated development environment, and keyboard designs rooted in the nehiyaw syllabic star chart.

A year of national research momentum

The 2025/26 academic year brought significant milestones for UBCO researchers.

In January, Dr. Mary Jung, a professor in the School of Health and Exercise Sciences, began a four-year term as Scientific Director of the CIHR Institute of Nutrition, Metabolism and Diabetes. The institute was relocated from SickKids in Toronto to UBCO and marks the first time the campus has hosted a national institute.

In February, UBCO and the Weston Family Foundation launched the $8-million Canadian Prescribed Fire Training Program. Led by Dr. Mathieu Bourbonnais, it will build national capacity for prescribed fire through five regional hubs.

Dr. Heather Gainforth was also named the SSHRC Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Research Coproduction and Implementation Science, bringing UBCO’s total Canada Research Chairs to 10.

Teaching excellence

Six faculty members were recognized for teaching in 2026. Sheila Epp (School of Nursing) and Dr. Julien Picault (Irving K. Barber Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences) received Killam Teaching Prizes. The Provost’s Award for Teaching Excellence and Innovation went to Dr. Abdallah Mohamed (Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science), Mayu Takasaki (Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies) and Dr. Ying Zhu (Faculty of Management).

Award winners

Keira Dail, a Bachelor of Science graduate, received the Pushor Mitchell LLP Prize, a $10,000 award given each year to a graduating student in the Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science or Irving K. Barber Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences who combines academic achievement with leadership in community service, cross-cultural relations, diversity, intellectual pursuits, or artistic and athletic endeavours.

Inaugural cohort graduates with Bachelor of Sustainability

UBCO’s first graduating class in the Bachelor of Sustainability left a mark on the region before leaving campus.

The group of 16 students completed more than 1,100 hours of community service by working with local partners, including the City of Kelowna, the Central Okanagan Land Trust, Be the Change Earth Alliance and the Kelowna and District SHARE Society.

Their projects included supporting the Climate Resilient Kelowna Strategy, planting western red cedars, leading climate resiliency workshops in K–12 schools and creating upcycling and re-use programs.

The graduates are heading into careers in environmental consulting, planning, field biology, wildfire management, GIS, agriculture and resource stewardship, with others pursuing graduate studies in planning and education.

The post The wait, the hard work was worth it for UBC Okanagan graduates appeared first on UBC's Okanagan News.

Rena Patrick, Audrey Casper, Angelina Hopkins-Rose and Deborah Doss-Cody wait for their names to be called during convocation ceremonies at UBC Okanagan on Thursday afternoon. The four make up the inaugural graduating cohort of the Bachelor of St’át’imc Language Fluency.

UBC Okanagan has conferred its first Bachelor of St’át’imc Language Fluency degrees, marking a milestone in the university’s ongoing partnership with Interior Salish communities to protect and revitalize one of British Columbia’s most critically endangered Indigenous languages.

Four graduates crossed the stage at UBC Okanagan on Thursday, completing a degree shaped by years of immersion-based learning, community-engaged scholarship and a collaboration between UBCO, the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology and the Lillooet Tribal Council, through its St’át’imc Education Institute.

Rena Patrick (N’Quatqua), Audrey Casper (Tsal’alh), Angelina Hopkins-Rose (New Westminster) and Deborah Doss-Cody (Xáxli’p) make up the inaugural cohort.

St’át’imcets is an Interior Salishan language spoken in the territory around the middle Fraser and Lillooet rivers. Fewer than 50 fluent speakers remain in the northern St’át’imc area, nearly all of them elderly, making the arrival of university-credentialed, immersion-trained graduates a significant moment for St’át’imc communities.

In communities like N’Quatqua, which sits between the northern and southern St’át’imc dialects, only a handful of silent speakers remain—people who understand the language but rarely speak it aloud.

“It’s so important to keep it going, keep it flowing, because we’re losing it,” says Patrick, an early childhood educator who already uses the language daily with the children in her care and hopes to establish a language nest in her community.

The Bachelor of St’át’imc Language Fluency is the third of UBCO’s four Interior Salish language degrees, offered through the Department of Community, Culture and Global Studies. It follows inaugural cohorts in Nsyilxcn and NłeɁkepmx, with Secwépemc welcoming its first cohort in 2025.

Students complete a two-year diploma at the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology before transferring to UBCO for third and fourth-year study, combining intensive immersion coursework, domain-specific language acquisition, culture courses and language revitalization theory.

Graduates are not only learning to speak their language, but also to become practitioners capable of leading community-based revitalization work.

Much of the program was delivered online, which the graduates say made it accessible to students spread across distant communities. They also forged a tight bond as a result.

“Anytime we had assignments or were challenged with deadlines, we really leaned on each other,” says Doss-Cody. “We always worked together and supported each other pretty steadily, pretty hard.”

For Hopkins-Rose, who grew up in the city with no exposure to the language, the degree has reshaped her path. She now speaks the language at home with her two children and continues her education in Indigenous language revitalization at the University of Victoria in July.

“The trajectory of my life completely shifted,” she says. “To hear my children speak the language is incredibly inspiring. I have a lot of hope for our language.”

Casper, who returned to the language decades after first being drawn to it as a child, says completing the degree has connected her to the relatives who came before her.

“Regaining our language has really made me feel closer to the ancestors who have passed,” she says.

All four graduates plan to continue working with the language. Hopkins-Rose begins a Master of Indigenous Language Revitalization at the University of Victoria in July. Patrick is beginning a community-based Bachelor of Education program this fall, and Doss-Cody also plans to pursue a Bachelor of Education with the goal of teaching.

“My heartfelt congratulations to the St’át’imc graduates and the communities that support them. We look forward to future collaborations with our partners in the newly formed Interior Salishan Studies Centre,” says Dr. Jeannette Armstrong, the Interior Salish Languages program coordinator.

Chief Justin Kane, chairperson of the Lillooet Tribal Council, says the working relationship between the Interior Salish Nations and post-secondary institutions has taken another significant step forward in supporting students and language revitalization.

“This is such a momentous achievement and will serve our longstanding mandate to revitalize our St’át’imc language,” he says. “This has always been an important part of the work led by our elders, and it will go a long way toward ensuring our language and culture remain in place for future generations.”

UBCO’s Interior Salish language degrees are among a small number of university-level immersion programs in Indigenous language fluency in Canada.

More than 2,600 students receive degrees from UBCO this week, joining 435,000 alumni spread across nearly 150 countries.

Three more ceremonies are set for Friday in Kelowna:

8:30 am: Faculty of Health and Social Development (School of Health and Exercise Sciences, School of Nursing, School of Social Work); College of Graduate Studies

11 am: Faculty of Education (Okanagan School of Education); Faculty of Management; College of Graduate Studies

1:30 pm: Faculty of Applied Science (School of Engineering); College of Graduate Studies

Ceremonies will be livestreamed at graduation.ok.ubc.ca.

The post UBC Okanagan graduates carry an Interior Salish language forward appeared first on UBC's Okanagan News.

Micah, left, Jackson and Aiden Borne pose in this family photo. Aiden is graduating this year from UBC Okanagan’s nursing program.

When Aiden Borne crosses the stage at UBC Okanagan’s spring convocation this week, he’ll be doing more than collecting his nursing degree. He’ll be stepping into a profession that helped save his life twice.

In 2016, at age 14, doctors diagnosed Borne with Burkitt lymphoma.

Five years later, while still in remission and preparing for his high school graduation, he received a second diagnosis: non-Hodgkin anaplastic large T-cell lymphoma.

Both required months of chemotherapy. Both made their marks.

“The chemotherapy left me very weak,” says Borne, 24. “All the brain fog, the physical inability to do what I could do previously. Especially entering university, that was frustrating. I wasn’t at the top of my mental game.”

However, it was during those long hospital stays that Borne found his calling.

“It’s been eye-opening to see the change a nurse can make in someone’s life,” he says. “I knew I was just another patient on their long shift, but to me they were making my day with these small acts of kindness. I said to myself, ‘That’s exactly what I want to do.’”

Borne eased into his studies, starting a Bachelor of Science degree even as the brain fog lingered. The first two years were especially difficult. Staying close to home helped. Raised in Kelowna, he says studying in his hometown “brought me a lot of peace.”

He eventually turned his experience into an unexpected asset in the classroom.

“There were a lot of times I’d learn something and think, oh, that’s why they did it this way,” he says. “When we started studying oncology, I already knew half of it because I’d gone through it. It gives me eyes to the other side of the story.”

Graduation day will be a family affair. Borne—the middle of three brothers—will be joined by his parents, grandparents and his girlfriend, whom he met in the nursing program and who graduates alongside him.

Borne’s older brother, Jackson, graduated earlier this year from the physiotherapy program at UBC Vancouver. Micah, his younger brother, is set to graduate next year.

His resilience traces back to advice from his grandfather. “He always told me, especially in the hospital, that the most important thing was to keep a positive attitude. For recovery, that was crucial.”

Borne’s advice to others facing hard times is simple: “Try to look at the bigger picture. In bad situations, it’s easy to live day by day. Sometimes it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

A message to graduates

UBC Okanagan Principal and Deputy Vice-Chancellor Dr. Lesley Cormack says the Class of 2026 should embrace the opportunities ahead.

“You should feel the joy of achievement, and the inspiration from that achievement to turn outward and become a force of change. Joy brings hope. And hope can change the world,” she says.

“When you think of all the students graduating who will go out into the world and bring with them positive change, it is awe-inspiring. It’s the reason UBC is here—to equip and empower those who have the drive to change the world.”

Convocation schedule

UBC Okanagan’s spring convocation takes place over two days, with three ceremonies each day at the campus in Kelowna.

Thursday, June 4

8:30 am: Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science; College of Graduate Studies

11 am: Irving K. Barber Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences; Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science; College of Graduate Studies

1:30 pm: Irving K. Barber Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences; Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies; College of Graduate Studies

Friday, June 5

8:30 am: Faculty of Health and Social Development (School of Health and Exercise Sciences, School of Nursing, School of Social Work); College of Graduate Studies

11 am: Faculty of Education (Okanagan School of Education); Faculty of Management; College of Graduate Studies

1:30 pm: Faculty of Applied Science (School of Engineering); College of Graduate Studies

Ceremonies will be livestreamed at graduation.ok.ubc.ca.

The post Nursing graduand finds a calling in the care that carried him through cancer appeared first on UBC's Okanagan News.

UBC Okanagan and BC Cancer – Kelowna have partnered on research that uses CT scans to detect cardiovascular disease risk in breast cancer patients.

UBC Okanagan researchers, working with scientists at BC Cancer – Kelowna, have developed a groundbreaking AI model that can help identify breast cancer patients who may face a double-threat—that of cancer and cardiovascular disease.

Cardiovascular disease remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide, responsible for an estimated 17.9 million fatalities annually. According to the American Heart Association, breast cancer patients are more likely to experience cardiovascular complications and related issues than the general population.

“Breast cancer patients already face immense challenges. Cardiovascular disease is a critical and often overlooked health threat they endure,” says Dr. Mohammad Shehata, a professor in the Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science’s computer science department.

“The model we have created gives clinicians a new tool to proactively identify those patients who are at high-risk of developing cardiovascular disease, allowing them to intervene earlier and potentially save lives.”

All breast cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy have chest CT scans to plan the treatment. This new research, published recently in Radiotherapy and Oncology, demonstrates how the CT scan can serve the added purpose of estimating cardiovascular risk.

“This research marks a significant step forward in how we assess cardiovascular risk in breast cancer patients,” says Dr. Rasika Rajapakshe, a senior medical physicist at BC Cancer – Kelowna. “By combining routinely collected CT imaging with clinical health records, we can detect risk earlier and more accurately than ever before—without adding extra burden to patients or the health-care system.”

Dr. Rajapakshe is a co-lead on this study, a clinical associate professor in UBC’s Faculty of Medicine and an adjunct computer science professor at UBCO.

This study demonstrates how the AI model can compare a patient’s CT scan with their electronic health records, including their general health, age, hypertension, diabetes and family history to forecast a more precise and personalized risk assessment.

Traditionally, risk models rely on clinical data, including age or any symptoms of hypertension or diabetes. This new research demonstrates how the AI models effectively identify subtle structural changes in the heart as seen on CT scans, alongside systemic risk factors.

“What makes this approach truly powerful is the use of multimodal artificial intelligence,” says Dr. Shehata. “By integrating imaging and clinical data, the model can capture complex patterns that traditional tools simply miss, opening the door to more personalized and precise care.”

The research team used powerful AI techniques to bring together different kinds of data to combine the information into a single system that helps predict health outcomes.

The model has demonstrated outstanding predictive accuracy—significantly outperforming existing methods.

“Our model achieved exceptionally high predictive performance, highlighting the value of combining advanced imaging analysis with cutting-edge clinical language models in a unified framework,” says Dr. Rajapakshe.

Dr. Shehata says this research underscores the power of locally driven innovation to address global health challenges.

“This level of precision has the potential to identify high-risk patients early in their treatment while also tailoring interventions and care accordingly,” he adds. “This approach may serve as a non-invasive, clinically valuable tool for early prediction of cardiovascular-related mortality, enabling timely identification of at-risk patients and improving their survival outcomes.”

This research is supported by the BC Cancer Foundation.

The post AI is helping identify heart health risks for people with breast cancer appeared first on UBC's Okanagan News.

Dr. Tanu Mitra, left, and Dr. Taylor Owen are coming to Kelowna to speak at UBC Okangan’s How Do We Manage in a World of Mis/Disinformation?

• What: How Do We Manage in a World of Mis/Disinformation? 
• When: Tuesday, May 26, 4 to 5:30 p.m. 
• Where: UBC Innovation Precinct Annex 1, 3505 Spectrum Court, Kelowna 
• Cost: Free; registration recommended 

As generative AI accelerates the spread of false and misleading content online, two of North America’s most prominent researchers on the information ecosystem will meet in Kelowna for a candid public conversation about what comes next.

Dr. Tanu Mitra, an associate professor at the University of Washington and co-director of UW’s Responsibility in AI Systems Experiences centre, and Dr. Taylor Owen, the Beaverbrook Chair in Media, Ethics and Communications at McGill University and host of the Globe and Mail’s Machines Like Us podcast, will headline a keynote discussion hosted by UBC Okanagan’s Digital Transparency Research Excellence Cluster (DTE).

“We’re so fortunate to have such cutting-edge experts share, in a candid dialogue, what the challenges and hope lie with managing mis/disinformation, a problem that many of us confront in our daily lives,” says Dr. Wendy Wong, Professor of political science and event co-host. “The DTC has created a unique opportunity to engage both technical and non-technical perspectives on an issue of importance to democracies.”

How Do We Manage in a World of Mis/Disinformation? presents two perspectives on the issue: Dr. Mitra’s computer science and human-centred AI research, and Dr. Owen’s work on media, technology and democratic policy.

The conversation will examine how public policy and professional practice can help foster an open, knowledge-driven information landscape that supports critical thinking and democratic health.

Dr. Suzie Currie, UBCO’s Vice-Principal and Associate Vice-President, Research and Innovation, will provide opening remarks. The session will be moderated by Dr. Wong, and Dr. Pourang Irani, Professor of Computer Science.

This plenary talk is co-organized by the Digital Transparency Research Excellence Cluster of the Office of the Vice-Principal, Research; the Irving K. Barber Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences; and the Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science.

The post Leading voices to gather for those drowning in information, starving for truth appeared first on UBC's Okanagan News.

Psilocybin, the active compound in magic mushrooms, significantly reduces aggression and activity in a small, naturally combative fish, according to a new UBC Okanagan-led study.

A new study led by a UBC Okanagan biologist has shown that psilocybin—the active compound in so-called magic mushrooms—significantly reduces aggression and activity in a small, naturally combative fish.

The findings, published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, point to new possibilities for using fish as a model to study psilocybin’s therapeutic potential in humans, particularly for conditions involving aggression, anxiety and impaired social functioning.

“We know psilocybin shows real promise for treating depression and anxiety, but its effects on social behaviour are barely understood,” says Dr. Suzie Currie, the study’s senior author and biology professor in the Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science.

“What we’ve shown is that even in a species hard-wired for aggression, a single low dose changes how these animals interact with each other.”

Dr. Currie and her collaborators at Acadia University and Université de Moncton studied the mangrove rivulus (Kryptolebias marmoratus), a small fish found in mangroves of Florida and Central America with two unusual traits that make it valuable for this kind of work.

It can self-fertilize, producing genetically identical offspring that allow researchers to control for genetic variation. And it’s notably aggressive toward other members of its own species, a trait that gave the team a clear behavioural baseline to measure against.

The researchers paired size-matched fish from different genetic lineages and recorded their interactions before and after the focal fish received a 20-minute waterborne dose of psilocybin.

After treatment, the fish showed significantly less overall movement and far fewer “swimming bursts,” or rapid, aggressive darts toward other fish.

“The fish weren’t sedated or impaired,” says Dr. Currie, who is also UBCO’s Vice-Principal and Associate Vice-President of Research and Innovation. “They were just calmer. They engaged less aggressively with a rival they would normally challenge.”

Fish are an increasingly important tool in neuropharmacology because they share a surprising amount of genetic and physiological architecture with humans, including the serotonin system that psilocybin acts on.

The drug binds to the same family of serotonin receptors in fish brains as it does in human brains, allowing researchers to study how it works at the cellular level in animals that are easier to maintain and observe than mammals.

According to the study, dose analysis showed the resulting concentration of psilocybin’s active form in the fish was comparable to plasma levels measured in humans receiving a low to moderate therapeutic dose.

The next phase of the work will examine serotonin pathways in the fish brain to better understand how psilocybin produces its calming effect.

Dr. Currie cautions that the work is foundational, not clinical.

“Fish models have a strong track record of pointing researchers toward mechanisms that hold up in mammals, including humans. If psilocybin works on aggression in a vertebrate this distantly related to us, that tells us something about how deeply conserved the underlying biology probably is.”

The post Magic mushrooms can even take the fight out of fish appeared first on UBC's Okanagan News.

The post The hottest course on campus puts peppers on the table, students in the lead appeared first on UBC's Okanagan News.