Congratulations to our recipients of the Canada Graduate Scholarships-Master’s (CGS-M)! The CGS-M are administered jointly by Canada’s three granting agencies CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC and are awarded to high-calibre Master’s level scholars to help develop their research skills and assists in the training of highly qualified personnel.
We are pleased to announce that Sabrina Cao, Christopher Lamb, Leslie Farrar, Olga Radivojevic, Elyott Chang, and Sara Klick were all awarded CGS-M Scholarships by CIHR. As recipients of this award, Sabrina, Christopher, Leslie, Olga, Elyott and Sara have the opportunity to fully concentrate on their Master’s studies for the 2024-25 academic year.
Update: We are pleased to announce that Daniel Elesin also received a CGS-M. Selected as an alternate in the competition, a Scholarship became available and was awarded to Daniel. Congratulations!
Daniel Elesin
Daniel works with supervisor Dr. Teresa Liu-Ambrose at the Aging, Mobility, and Cognitive Health Lab, which focuses on assessing the effects of targeted exercise training and physical activity in older adults at risk for physical and cognitive decline. Daniel’s research aims to examine the effects of targeted exercise training on the cognitive function of older adults with chronic stroke. In particular, Daniel is investigating whether exercise causes improvements in response inhibition, an executive function process that enables an individual to control their impulses.
The Canada Graduate Scholarship – Master’s from Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) will allow Daniel to focus on his research, as the costs of tuition and other fees associated with living in Vancouver will be covered.
Outside of academia, Daniel loves to be physically active. You can find Daniel at the gym, playing a sport, or walking along one of Vancouver’s beaches!
Sabrina Cao
Sabrina is an MSc student with Kristin Campbell’s Cancer Exercise and Physiotherapy Lab (CEPL) which focuses on cancer rehabilitation! The CEPL team looks at the impact that exercise can have throughout an individual’s journey with cancer. Recently, the lab has focused on virtual exercise programs, which have great potential in expanding the populations that they are able to reach by improving accessibility and scope. Sabrina’s research is more geared towards implementation science; Sabrina is interested in moving evidence-based practice in cancer rehabilitation into the clinical setting, so that everyone living with and beyond cancer has access to safe exercise, which Sabrina aims hopes can close some of the gaps in our cancer care system.
The Canada Graduate Scholarship – Master’s from Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) will support Sabrina in the second year of the Master’s degree. In particular, it will help fund the training opportunities that Sabrina hopes to pursue. Implementation science is a relatively young field, and a lot of the learning Sabrina does is self-directed; this award will support Sabrina’s participation in more structured learning.
If the weather is nice, you can find Sabrina running and hiking, or playing as many sports with friends as possible. Exercise is especially important to Sabrina because she enjoys baking and makes a delicious focaccia bread; if you want to know the secret, it’s a lot of olive oil!
Christopher Lamb
Christopher works with supervisor Dr. Lara Boyd in the Brain Behaviour lab, which is primarily concerned with what limits and facilitates neuroplasticity by exploring brain-behaviour relationships. Using non-invasive brain stimulation and assessment techniques (i.e., transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and electroencephalography (EEG)), Christopher will be exploring cortical excitability changes in different parts of the sensory, motor, and pain networks in individuals with knee osteoarthritis. Specifically, Christopher is testing how level of pain intensity influences these changes.
This funding will help pay for data collection supplies and support, which will greatly enhance Christopher’s ability to recruit an adequate number of participants to best answer the research questions.
Outside of academia, Christopher likes to hang out with his cat, ride his bike, do weights, hike, read fiction, write creatively, cook, and meditate.
Leslie Farrar
Leslie is a Master’s student in the lab of Dr. Stephanie Glegg, OT, PhD, an implementation scientist and Knowledge Translation expert. Leslie’s research aims to address an evidence-to-practice gap in adolescent mental health care and the use of evidence-informed exercise as an effective treatment for improved treatment outcomes. Leslie’s project will engage youth with lived experience on the research team to investigate the barriers and facilitators to using exercise therapy. Using a mixed methods study design, Leslie’s research team will seek perspectives from adolescents with depression, anxiety, and ADHD, caregivers, and a broad range of clinicians across BC. This research will inform recommendations to improve the use of exercise therapy as an effective treatment option for adolescents with these mental health concerns.
This award will directly support the work of this project by covering the costs of tuition and expenses that arise to undertake this BC-wide mixed-methods study.
Leslie is a registered physiotherapist who practices clinically, part time, while completing this research. As a parent to three active teens, Leslie enjoys being an active volunteer within their school and local community. Outside of these commitments, Leslie enjoys hiking, the west coast outdoors, and trail running with her two Great Danes.
Olga Radivoejevic
Olga begins MSc studies this fall under the supervision of Dr. Jordan Guenette in the Cardiopulmonary Exercise Physiology Lab which aims to better understand the physiological factors limiting exercise tolerance in health and disease. Olga’s research will examine the effects of different breathing methods on breathlessness and exercise performance, with the goal of informing personalized breathing strategies to improve performance and health while reducing breathlessness.
This award will allow Olga to focus solely on her research and will help cover costs of equipment, training, and/or personnel.
Outside of academia, you can find Olga running or walking along the seawall, reading, relaxing at the beach, or, more recently, climbing!
Elyott Chang
Elyott is a part of Dr. Michael Hunt’s Motion Analysis and Biofeedback laboratory (MABLAB). The MABLAB does a lot of gait analysis where biomechanics are used to research clinical interventions for people with knee osteoarthritis. Elyott will be looking specifically at combining a type of gait modification and orthotics to examine the effects at the knee.
Winning the CIHR CGS-M is life changing for Elyott! Living in Vancouver can be really costly and the fact that the award comes in just as previous funding finished will help Elyott afford these costs and allow him to fully focus on his project.
Elyott loves to play basketball and chess in his free time and is currently training for the half Ironman coming up in May at Victoria! Elyott is also a swim coach at the Arbutus club and loves teaching the kids there!
Sara Klick
Sara is a part of both the Neuroplasticity, Imagery and Motor Behaviour Laboratory (NIMBL), supervised by Dr. Sarah Kraeutner at UBC-Okanagan, as well as the Brain Behaviour Laboratory (BBL), supervised by Dr. Lara Boyd at UBC-Vancouver. The NIMBL researches motor learning and stroke-related neuroscience, using non-physical forms of practice such as motor imagery (the mental rehearsal of a physical task without moving) to enhance recovery post-injury. The BBL conducts research in neuroscience and motor learning after stroke, using neuroimaging techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Sara’s research under the expertise of both Dr. Kraeutner and Dr. Boyd examines how stroke-related factors affect brain activity during motor imagery. These factors include upper-limb movement impairments, the time since an individual experienced their stroke, lesion location and size within the brain, and an individual’s ability to perform mental tasks. Overall, Sara’s work will inform on the use and efficacy of using motor imagery for recovery post-stroke, as well as gain a deeper understanding on how we can personalize rehabilitation efforts to inter-individual differences in post-stroke characteristics.
The CIHR CGS-M awards Sara with $17,500 in funding over 1 year of work/school. This award will provide Sara with the financial stability needed to focus only on the research without outside distractions. It will also allow Sara to attend conferences and seminars to deepen knowledge in the field of rehabilitation.
Outside of academia, Sara is an avid yogi! Sara loves attending yoga classes daily for a movement break in between participants and thesis writing. Sara also enjoys golfing in the spring/summer months!