Celebrating the Class of 2018

June 1, 2018

Photo: Owen Egan/Joni Dufour

Dr. Salman Qureshi (Photo: Owen Egan/Joni Dufour)

On a sunny Tuesday morning, May 29, McGill University launched its 2018 Convocation period with the ceremony for Health Science students under the tent on lower campus. In addition to the graduates hearing their names called to receive their hard-earned diplomas, several awards were handed out during the ceremony, including the Osler Award for Outstanding Teaching in the Faculty of Medicine to Dr. Salman Qureshi, Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Experimental Medicine and the Principal’s Prize for Outstanding Emerging Researchers, awarded to Dr. Erica Moodie, Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health.

Dr. Erica Moodie (Photo: Owen Egan/Joni Dufour)

Dr. John Wennberg, a graduate of the McGill Medicine Class of 1961 and a legend in the field of health care delivery and health services research, was conferred with an honorary doctorate and delivered the Convocation Address, during which he encouraged graduates to stay humble, have fun and, in a nod to the Canadian health care system, to stay in Canada, saying, “A career can develop even though you don’t know where you’re going. Take some time, explore, learn, ask questions and may your life picture be beautiful. Be humble, have some fun along the way, ski if you can and stay in Canada, you have a high-quality and equitable health care system.”

Dr. John Wennberg (center) Photo: Owen Egan/Joni Dufour

The 2018 valediction was delivered by Alexandra Maclean, a Physical Therapy graduate who echoed some of Dr. Wennberg’s words, telling her peers that, “Knowing what you want to do is still a long way from actually doing it.”

Valedictorian Alexandra Maclean (Photo: Joanne Hui)

Congratulations to all of our graduates!

Related stories:

Spring Convocation 2018: Q & A with Award-Winning Nursing Graduates
Big man on campus

 

 

Photo: Owen Egan/Joni Dufour

Photo: Owen Egan/Joni Dufour

Photo: Owen Egan/Joni Dufour

Photo: Owen Egan/Joni Dufour

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shikha Saxera, Alaa Mohammad Arafah and Tatiana Ogourtsova are excited to receive their doctorates in Rehabilitation Science after five years of studies. Says Alaa, “I did my project back in Saudi. The title was ‘Self-Management for People with MS in Saudi.'” (see Facebook for photo) Also:
Saxera worked on dual tasking in children. Her supervisor was Isabelle Gagnon: “She was very chilled out, very stress free. Very clear about what we wanted to do.”
Aala worked with Nancy Mayo. “I did my project back in Saudi and kept coming back and forth. She was very supportive.”
Tatiana studied “the use of virtual reality for visual neglect after stroke with Dr. Anouk Lamontagne and Dr. Philippe Archambault.”
(Photo: Anne Chudobiak)

Zhuoyo Wang embarks on a post-doc at the CHUM after five years pursuing a PhD in Biostatistics here at McGill. Wang, who worked on statistical methods for evaluating diagnostic tools, is grateful to his supervisors, Dr. Nanditi Dendukuri and Dr. Lawrence Joseph: “They gave me good advice, not only on my thesis, but also on lots of things, like time management. They provided a lot of opportunities for me to present my research. I really enjoyed my time working with them.” (Photo: Anne Chudobiak)

“For me, this has been a 16-year journey, a tunnel-vision focus on what the prize is, which is to be able to contribute to lower middle income countries like Nigeria, where I am from, but on a grand scale. You have to believe in a dream and do it one step at a time.” — Collins Oghor, MDCM/MBA’18 (Photo: Joanne Hui)

For his PhD thesis, Luc Villandré (right) studied clustering for the HIV epidemic in Montreal. As he explains, according to the latest figures, the HIV prevalence rate among men who have sex with men is estimated at 13%. In his research, he uses HIV sequencing data to discover so-called HIV transmission clusters. “I am doing a postdoc, but in a different field! I am re-specializing, in spatial statistics. I work for HEC Montréal. (Photo: Anne Chudobiak)

 

 

 

 

 

 

June 1, 2018