
Justin Turner
Doctor of Philosophy in Rehabilitation Sciences (PhD)
Wildfires, air pollution, and COVID-19: Individual and community resilience towards social and environmental disruption
Ranked among the world’s top medical schools with the fifth-largest MD enrollment in North America, the UBC Faculty of Medicine is a leader in both the science and the practice of medicine. Across British Columbia, more than 12,000 faculty and staff are training the next generation of doctors, health care professionals, and medical researchers, making remarkable discoveries to help create the pathways to better health for our communities at home and around the world.
The UBC Faculty of Medicine offers a diverse array of training opportunities including cutting-edge research experiences in the biosciences, globally recognized population health education, quality health professional training, as well as several certificate and online training options. The Faculty of Medicine is home to more than 1,700 graduate students housed in 20 graduate programs (14 of which offer doctoral research options). Year after year, research excellence in the Faculty of Medicine is supported by investment from funding sources here at home and around the globe, receiving approximately more than $1.8B in total research funding since 2016.
We value our trainees and the creative input they have to scholarly activities at UBC. Our priority is to enable their maximum potential through flexible opportunities that provide a breadth of experiences tailored to their own individual career objectives. We maintain high standards of excellence, and work to create a community of intellectually and socially engaged scholars that work collaboratively with each other, the university, and the world, with the overarching goal of promoting the health of individuals and communities.
Most Faculty research is conducted under the auspices of 23 centres and institutes that are part of UBC or affiliated with it, in collaboration with our health partners.
UBC Faculty of Medicine provides innovative educational and research programs in the areas of health and life sciences through an integrated and province-wide delivery model in facilities at locations throughout British Columbia.
The Life Sciences Centre is the largest building on the UBC Vancouver campus. Completed in 2004, the $125 million, 52,165 sq metres building was built to accommodate the distributed medical educational program and the Life Sciences Institute.
The Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health (DMCBH), a partnership between the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health, unites under one roof research and clinical expertise in neuroscience, psychiatry and neurology in order to accelerate discovery and translate new knowledge into better treatment and prevention strategies. DMCBH has both laboratory and clinical research areas within the Centre proper and in the UBC Hospital Koerner Pavilion. Our core facilities are essential to ongoing collaboration, teaching, and research.
The BC Children's Hospital Research Institute is it the largest research institute of its kind in Western Canada in terms of people, productivity, funding and size. With more than 350,000 square feet of space, the Institute has both 'wet bench' laboratory and 'dry lab' clinical research areas, and other areas to facilitate particular areas of research and training.
New knowledge and innovation are crucial to successfully identifying, addressing and overcoming the increasingly complex health-related challenges that influence the lives of all of us – in British Columbia, in Canada, and in countries and communities around the globe.
The UBC Faculty of Medicine is recognized nationally and internationally for research innovation that advances knowledge and translates new discoveries to improve the health and well-being of individuals and communities. Research opportunities feature extensive collaborations across other faculties, health institutions and health partners across British Columbia, Canada and internationally.
The Faculty provides and fosters research excellence across the full continuum, from basic science to applied science and then to knowledge implementation, with a focus on precision health; cancer; brain and mental health; heart and lung health; population health; and chronic diseases.
Name | Academic Unit(s) | Research Interests |
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Loewen, Christopher | Department of Cellular & Physiological Sciences | Genomics; Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS); Autism; Cancer Cell Metabolism; Cell Biology; Cell polarity; Endoplasmic Reticulum; Genetic Networks; Golgi; Lipid Signalling; Lipid Traffic; Membrane Contact Sites; Membrane Diffusion Barriers; Membranes and Organelles; Super Resolution Microscopy; Systems Biology |
Loock, Christine Ann | Department of Pediatrics | Brain, Behaviour & Development; Social Pediatrics; Health Inequities; Child-health medical-home: children/families, integration / patient care / community services; Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders; Pediatric Sleep Disorders |
Loree, Jonathan | Division of Medical Oncology | Cancer; Carcinoid tumors |
Lorincz, Matthew | Department of Medical Genetics | Genetic medicine; Developmental Genetics; genomics; chromatin; chromatinopathies; Epigenetics; Epigenomics; Gene regulation; Neurodevelopmental disorders |
Loucks, Catrina | Department of Pediatrics, Department of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology & Therapeutics | Medical, health and life sciences; Pharmacogenomics; Pain management; Medical Genetics; Model organism genetics; Drug reactions |
Luciani, Dan | Department of Surgery | Cell metabolism; Cell differentiation, proliferation and death; Organelle function; Other basic medicine and life sciences; Diabetes; Pancreatic beta-cell function and failure; Mitochondrial physiology; Lysosomal physiology; Cell calcium signalling; Cell stress signalling; Mechanisms of cell death; autophagy; Cellular senescence; fluorescence microscopy |
Lui, Harvey | Department of Dermatology & Skin Science | lasers; skin disease; psoriasis; dermatology; pigmentary disorders; vitiligo; applied optics; photomedicine; photodynamic therapy, Dermatology, photomedicine, lasers, psoriasis, vitiligo, dermatologic education |
Lunken, Genelle | Department of Pediatrics | Clinical nutrition; Human nutrition and dietetics, n.e.c.; Gastroenterology; Personalised nutrition therapies; Dietary fibre; Inflammatory bowel disease; Gut microbiome; Food additives |
Luo, Honglin | Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine | Basic medicine and life sciences; Viral Infections; Cardiomyopathy; Innate immunity; RNA viruses; Enteroviral infection and neurodegeneration; Oncolytic virus; Protein quality control in cardiac remodeling |
Lynn, Francis | Department of Surgery, School of Biomedical Engineering | Diabetes; ß-cell development; ß-cell biology; Human pluripotent stem cells; CRISPR/Cas; transcriptional regulation |
Lyons, Christopher | Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences | Pediatric Ophthalmology; Oculoplastics |
MacHan, Lindsay | Department of Radiology | radiology; infertility; vascular disease |
Mackenzie, Ian | Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine | Alzheimer's Disease |
MacLure, Malcolm | Department of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology & Therapeutics | Epidemiology, patient safety, quality control, pharmaceutical sciences, health services research |
MacNab, Ying | School of Population and Public Health | Bayesian paradigm, foundations of statistics, space-time statistics, structured statistical models, taxonomic models, item response theory, inductive reasoning, Bayesian burden of disease methodology, Geometics, Health service and population health geoinformation system, and meta-data innovation in medical and health research |
Macnab, Andrew | Department of Pediatrics | Developmental Neurosciences, Child Health, Diabetes, Nutrition & Metabolism (Nutrition & Metabolism) |
MacNeily, Andrew | Department of Urologic Sciences | Evidence to Innovation; Care of children with urological conditions |
MacVicar, Brian | Department of Psychiatry | Brain Research, epilepsy, astrocyte, glia, dendrites, synapse, imaging, two photon laser scanning microscopy, neurophysiology, Role of calcium, regulation of neurons, cell death |
Madden, Kenneth | Division of Geriatric Medicine | Geriatrics and gerontology; Exercise interventions; Sedentary Behaviour; Syncope; Falls Prevention; Sarcopenia; Machine Learning; point of care ultrasound |
Madhav, Manu | School of Biomedical Engineering | Neurosciences, medical and physiological and health aspects; Cognitive representations in the brain; Place cells; Spatial navigation; Path planning; Control theory; Alzheimer's disease |
Mancini, John | Divisions of Cardiology & Cardiovascular Surgery | Cardiology |
Manges, Amee | School of Population and Public Health | Health sciences; Immunology; Microbiology; Public and population health; Epidemiology; Molecular epidemiology; Public health |
Mannas, Miles | Department of Urologic Sciences | prostate cancer, novel techniques for real-time pathologic tissue analysis utilizing artificial intelligence |
Marinova-Todd, Stefka | School of Audiology and Speech Sciences | bilingualism, second language acquisition, language development, literacy, ESL children, children at risk of language difficulties, language disorders in bilingual children and adults, Second language acquisition; language development and language learning difficulties of bilingual children |
Marra, Marco | Department of Medical Genetics, Michael Smith Laboratories | Genomics; Bioinformatics, n.e.c.; Epigenetics and epigenomics; Genetics, n.e.c.; Cancer genetics; Genetics; Epigenomics; Cancer biology |
This is an incomplete sample of recent publications in chronological order by UBC faculty members with a primary appointment in the Faculty of Medicine.
Year | Citation | Program |
---|---|---|
2024 | Dr. Segat studied how intrinsic and extrinsic factors can influence the onset of T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. She showed that inflammation favors the development of a more immature disease subtype, and that a gene called MYCN is essential for this subtype. She also found indirect ways to inhibit MYCN which could guide therapy development. | Doctor of Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Oncology (PhD) |
2024 | Dr. Verma has discovered a novel role for the PAN protein complex. Her work demonstrates that targeting this specific protein complex in cancer cells disrupts their ability to divide. Importantly, such intervention may spare normal cells from harm while specifically affecting the cancerous ones. | Doctor of Philosophy in Cell and Developmental Biology (PhD) |
2024 | Dr. Brewis used budding yeast as a model to explore how the histone variant H2A.Z, a DNA packaging protein, affects gene expression during cellular stress. Her work advances both our knowledge of the mechanisms involved in genome regulation along with our understanding of what makes a histone variant a variant. | Doctor of Philosophy in Medical Genetics (PhD) |
2024 | Dr. May classified a set of molecules produced by tumours which inhibit the immune response and enhance tumour growth. To combat this, he developed multiple approaches to engineer immune cells to overcome this inhibition. When applied to cell-based therapies, this has a potential to result in improved efficacy across diverse cancer types. | Doctor of Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Oncology (PhD) |
2024 | Dr. Qiu studied an aggressive soft tissue cancer called synovial sarcoma. He profiled human synovial sarcoma surgical specimens using epigenetic sequencing techniques and subsequently characterized epigenetic subgroups of the tumours. This research can guide emerging epigenetic therapeutic strategies in the treatment of this cancer. | Doctor of Medicine and Doctor of Philosophy (MDPhD) |
2024 | Dr. Li studied the functional roles of a cell adhesion receptor, integrin alpha6, in breast cancer cells. She found that splice variants of this integrin differentially modulate tumour cell adhesion, invasion and metastasis. Her work enhances our understanding of the roles of particular integrins in tumour progression. | Doctor of Philosophy in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine (PhD) |
2024 | Dr. Cheung studied a protein involved in the autophagy pathway that removes waste from cells in the human body. His work investigated the structural and functional relationship of this autophagy regulator and its coordination with other proteins to facilitate the process, further delineating its underlying mechanism that leads to related diseases. | Doctor of Philosophy in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (PhD) |
2024 | Dr. Kangarani-Farahani investigated the effectiveness of rehabilitation in autistic children with developmental coordination disorder, revealing lasting improvements in motor performance and changes in brain regions related to motor and cognitive functions. This study underscores the effectiveness of rehabilitation in this clinical population. | Doctor of Philosophy in Rehabilitation Sciences (PhD) |
2024 | Dr. Wardman's research has focused on developing new enzymatic tools to manipulate proteins that are modified with certain sugars. To do so, he discovered new enzymes from Nature and also engineered these enzymes to better carry out these manipulations. The tools he developed will enable us to shed light on these otherwise mysterious modifications. | Doctor of Philosophy in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (PhD) |
2024 | Dr. Nikiforuk studied how the coronavirus which causes COVID-19 infects cells in the upper human respiratory tract to find that people's risk of infection varies. This finding will be useful in controlling coronavirus transmission and designing new treatment strategies. | Doctor of Philosophy in Population and Public Health (PhD) |