Heidi Wicks

A student in the School of Pharmacy has received a coveted ACEnet Undergraduate Research Fellowship Award for Advanced Research Computing (ARC), which involves computer clusters to solve scientific, engineering, business or data analysis problems that are too large or complex for any single computer.

Maria Flynn (Class of 2017) received an undergraduate research fellowship award to work on a proposed project from Dr. Laleh Alisaraie’s advanced computational research lab for a cancer drug discovery project.

Ms. Flynn feels that research is a world of endless possibility.

“I spent the last two summers researching in a marine biology laboratory at the Ocean Sciences Centre. It provides an opportunity to constantly expand my knowledge and satisfy my curiosity. I’m able to apply what I’ve learned to different situations and challenge myself in new and exciting ways. There are so many things just waiting to be discovered.”

Advanced computing is a rapidly-growing combination of hardware, software and skills that is advancing Canada’s expertise and capabilities in science and technology.

Dr. Alisaraie’s lab is unique in the School of Pharmacy and her drug discovery research extensively benefits from Compute Canada’s resources all across the country - in particular, from ACEnet, the regional high performance computing consortium for universities in Atlantic Canada. 

In summer 2014, she established  a new computational medicinal chemistry lab that, due to its multidisciplinary nature, aims to nurture the curious minds of a new generation of researchers. Students from various departments, including Chemistry, Biochemistry, Biophysics and Computer Science, study with Dr. Alisaraie.

She believes in encouraging undergraduate students to see their courses as more than just a mandatory program and instead see them as a way to open doors for future opportunities.

“Through research activities we show our students how important it is to think critically and be innovative if they want to be the future’s game changers,” she said. “This will help them to make a better sense of what and how we teach them in the classrooms.”

“With this award, Maria will have the opportunity to enter the amazing world of advanced computational research. I am hoping that she benefits from the best of two worlds of pharmacy and computational research by applying what she has learned from various courses and implement them in addressing open questions in her research project.”

Dr. Alisaraie also feels that it’s important that pharmaceutical science research has been recognized amongst other disciplines.

“Pharmaceutical research, quite simply, helps discover cures to existing diseases, develops new medications or modification of existing pharmaceuticals and increases efficacy of patient compliance and comfort. The options are limitless and the ability to positively impact the lives of those suffering with ailments is astounding.”