Being a graduate student at the BC Cancer Agency Research Centre (CRC) in Vancouver, I am fortunate to be exposed to many great opportunities in research and ideas for how and where to go from here in my career.
Having had the opportunity to be exposed to and involved in research on a national and international scale, I can confidently say that I enjoy research. I love the challenge of...
The process of becoming a scientist is certainly a complicated one, maybe lifelong. A key part of this process I’ve experienced, that is just as important as learning the science and research methods, is mentorship.
Mentorship has helped me transition from being a new, ‘green’ student to feeling confident in my research and contributing to the team here at the BC Cancer Agency Research...
As my close family has, unfortunately, been affected by cancer, I can relate to that feeling of urgency and desire to accelerate research and better understand cancer. As a family member, I want to know that more effective and less toxic treatments are on the horizon. As a researcher, I want to discover the same thing. This means learning how cancers exert their effect and finding the changes...
My search for a research laboratory focused on studying diseases immediately led me to the BC Cancer Agency Research Centre (BCCRC) and its Terry Fox Laboratory. I soon learned that the latter was a multidisciplinary group primarily focused on understanding leukemia and advancing treatments. When I was offered a co-op work placement in this lab, I accepted without hesitation.
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After high school, I was accepted to the University of British Columbia (UBC). I knew I wanted to focus on cell biology and genetics, study the effects of genetics on how cells work, and how this influences health and disease. But I was at a loss for how this could become my career path.
Eventually I learned about the Cooperative Education program at UBC. This program allowed me to gain...
Continuing from my previous post, what ultimately helped to navigate my academic career towards science was a fantastic science teacher I had in Grade 10. He did two things that caught my attention most.
First, our year-long assignment was to bring articles about science in the news, and each week, my teacher would pick the most interesting news and breakthroughs to share with our class...
My name is Courteney Lai, and I am a PhD student in the Terry Fox Laboratory at the BC Cancer Agency Research Centre in Vancouver. I am supervised by Dr. Keith Humphries, who is the Director of the Terry Fox Laboratory, and Dr. Sam Aparicio (a previous guest blogger, too), the Head of Molecular Oncology.
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