The Wiebe group had a wonderful time at conferences this summer! We presented at the CSC in Winnipeg and at CSTCC in Halifax. Rosie was invited to give a flash talk in the Chemistry in 2067 symposium about her work on pressure-controlled molecular machines, and Simon won the Best Undergraduate Poster Award from the Environmental Division for their poster presentation on using DFT to investigate the tautomerization of the environmental contaminant 6PPDQ. Heather was part of the organizing team for the Breaking the Barriers and Biases in Sciences: From Systemic to Scientific symposium, which had a fantastic turnout, and she also gave an invited talk on the high pressure lactate dehydrogenase work in the Biomolecular Dynamics – Experimental and Computational Advances symposium. At CSTCC, Savannah presented a poster on her work studying the toxicity of opioid precursors, and Heather was invited to chair the Biochemistry symposium. Well done everyone!

Congratulations to Simon and Savannah, who graduated this summer with a BSc in Chemistry!

Check out our latest work, published in collaboration with Hans-Peter Loock’s group at the University of Victoria! Link: https://doi.org/10.1039/D4NJ00047A

Congratulations to Savannah Mercer for winning second best flash presentation for the Chemistry in Canada 2067 Symposium at CSC2023, Vancouver! She presentation gave an overview of her poster which she also presented at CSC2023!

Congratulations to Savannah Mercer for receiving an NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award!

Savannah Mercer was interviewed by VIUBlogs to share her experiences doing undergrad research, read about it here: https://www.viu.ca/blog/solving-real-world-problems-computational-chemistry

Heather and Savannah gave a Science & Technology Community Lecture at VIU. Savannah’s talk was titled “Molecular Docking Studies of Carfentanil Precursors in the µ-opioid receptor” and Heather’s talk was titled “Under Pressure: Using computational methods to investigate pressure-resistance in deep Sea
organisms.” Thank you to everyone who came out!

In collaboration with Dr. Chris Gill and the Applied Environmental Research Laboratory, we have published our first manuscript! Check it out here: https://doi.org/10.1002/dta.3431

Savannah Mercer was interviewed for the Globe and Mail to discuss her experiences doing undergrad research at VIU! Read the paper here: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/composer-preview/BSHN262GPBH4JBRYIIO7EXQSQM/

Today is the last day of the summer research season. Thank you to all undergraduate students who worked in the Molecular Modelling Lab this summer – your hard work makes everything possible!

VIU held the annual USRA Showcase event today, where Simon and Savannah presented the results of their summer research. Very well done to both of you!