News & Events

The Department of Biology and the Department of Environmental Science host seminars and journal clubs throughout the school year. Guest speakers from local industry, research institutes, and local and international universities have joined us as part of the seminar series.  This is a great opportunity to meet new people and feel a sense of community.  Most presentations are open to the public.

Please see the Biology and ENVS Fall 2022 Seminar Poster for more information.

We will have the last seminar talk of this semester on Friday, December 2, starting at 3:30 p.m. If you would like to join but can’t join in person, please see the Zoom link below.

Kate Chadwick and Ricky Orton will give the talk:

Sable Island Horses: Getting to the Bare Bones!”

Science building, S345, December 2nd  at 3.30pm

Since the mid-1980s, skulls from the horses on Sable Island have been collected by Zoe Lucas. During the summer of 2022 over 600 Sable Island horse skulls were carefully removed from storage and brought to Saint Mary’s University.

 

The focus of this project was to inventory, and quality assess skulls individually, creating a written and photographic record to be stored by the Frasier Lab and the Sable Island Institute in a bespoke database. Additionally, our aim was to establish, if present, skull variation and diversity within the population based on sex and age class. Finally, we hoped to utilize known tooth metrics to age each horse, placing them in age classes and comparing this with known age horses and thus ground-truth these methods. We will discuss the project in more detail and present some early results.

 

NEW!

Thanks to funding from WiseAtlantic (https://www.wiseatlantic.ca/) and Patrick Power Library, we are able to hold a book club focusing on Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility (EDIA) in academia. At the book club this semester, we will be reading two books and discussing ways in which academia needs to change in order to recruit, manage and support women and other underrepresented groups in STEMM. The book club is open to anyone from students to faculty, from staff to those external to SMU – so please feel free to spread the word widely.

The two books for this semester are:

Stop Fixing Women: Why Building Fairer Workplaces Is Everybody's Business by Catherine Fox

An Inclusive Academy: Achieving Diversity And Excellence by Abigail J. Stewart

Both are available from Patrick Power Library as either a physical or e-book version.

We will meeting every other week on the 2nd and 4th Friday of every month starting Friday, October 14, at 4 p.m. at the fireplace in Patrick Power Library.

As it is Fall Break and Remembrance Day, there is a slight deviation from our usual meeting time, we will meet at 3 p.m. on Thursday, November 10, at the fireplace in Patrick Power Library. The fireplace is on your left as you approach the elevators.

We will be discussing chapters 3 & 4 in Stop Fixing Women, and chapter 5 & 6 in An Inclusive Academy. Both books are available from the front desk in the library (An Inclusive Academy is also available as an e-book).

All information can be found here including all the dates as well as which chapters we will be focusing on each week:

https://www.erincameronlab.com/edia-book-club

 

Erin Francheville and Kaylee MacLeod are taking part in the Atlantic Canada AquaHacking Challenge 2022-23 as Water Issue Leaders. The Challenge has just launched and registration is now open to all brilliant problem-solvers out there.

The AquaHacking Challenge is a water tech competition and mentorship program designed to spark tech and business development by addressing environmental problems related to freshwater. Between September 2022 and June 2023, we’re challenging students and early career professionals from all disciplines to team up and develop innovative solutions to improve the health of the water streams in Atlantic Canada. It is an opportunity for problem solvers to work with teammates, mentors and experts to create a real impact in our watersheds. 

There are five water issues for competitors to hack, and we are proudly leading one of them!

  • Innovation for Alteration Projects in Lakes and Rivers 

  • Prevention of saltwater intrusion

  • Aquatic Invasive Species

  • Automated Water Quality Monitoring

  • Stormwater Prevention and Green Infrastructure

With $60,000 in cash prizes and local incubator space up for grabs, this is a great opportunity for anyone interested in entrepreneurship, technology, engineering, biological sciences, marketing, design, and environmental impact & sustainability—or just looking for a fun way to learn new skills, connect with mentors, and make the world a better place!! 

If you know any young innovators concerned about the state of our local lakes and rivers, here is a chance to do something about it: Register for the event: https://aquaaction.org/challenge/atlantic-canada-2022-23/

 

 


 

Contact us

Department of Biology
Mailing address:
923 Robie Street