2021 SWCC Conference Team

The 2021 Virtual Conference could not have been possible without the considerable investment in time and talent of the following people. Thank you!

Adrianna Baggio is passionate about elevating local health research and ensuring that science is accessible to the community and general public at large. Adriana considers herself very fortunate to work with the dream team at WE-SPARK Health Institute in Windsor, Ontario where she is the Knowledge Translation and NUCLEUS Coordinator. In her free time you can find her spending time with family, eating Windsor pizza, and cooking with her husband. Twitter @_adrianagrande1 

Kabita Baral

Catarina Chaggas is a Brazilian freelance science writer and journalist. She's been working on practical and research activities in science communication for the past 18 years and moved to Canada in 2019. One of her greatest passions is writing for kids about science -- although she really enjoys writing for the grown-ups too. From news stories to museum exhibitions, she believes there's always a nice way to communicate complex science topics to all kinds of audiences, helping to bridge the gaps between science and society.

After starting out as an aerospace engineering technologist, Gillian Clinton moved on to running her own information research company, Toronto-based Clinton Research (www.clintonresearch.ca), in 1992.  Her company provides information literacy workshops, competitive intelligence and knowledge management services including research, literature reviews, technical writing and editing to academia, government organizations, private corporations and individuals in Canada, the United States and Europe. 

Gillian has worked in academic and corporate libraries as a reference librarian, catalogued multimedia works, initiated document control systems, compiled bibliographies, become an expert at grant and proposal writing and updated references for McGraw-Hill’s Access Science database. She would be an enthusiastic amateur astronomer if she only had more time! Twitter @ClintonResearch

Eileen Daniels has been communicating science throughout her academic career; starting with my master specialization in ‘Science, Communication, & Society’ and followed by work experience in museum education. Also, within her PhD program at the Amsterdam UMC she received several opportunities to communicate the science of our research group to the audience via public speaking, informal teaching, and social media.

For the last two years, Eileen has been working part-time for a Dutch research consortium as a scientific outreach officer where is she is responsible for internal and external communication, organizing conferences, and providing early career researchers with training on how to conduct outreach.

Ben Davis-Purcell is a PhD Candidate at Carleton University studying experimental particle physics. He works as a member of ATLAS, an international particle physics collaboration based at CERN, the huge laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. More importantly, Ben is a passionate science communicator who loves talking science with anyone and everyone, and believes that science IS for everyone. In his spare time he can be found cooking, playing drums, and doing virtual workouts with his family while he patiently waits for the time when we can all do things together in person again. Twitter @BenDavisPurcell

Josephine Esposto is a current graduate student at Trent University in Peterborough, ON, Canada.  Her fascination for medical research has guided her research towards biochemical and biophysical analyses of proteins implicated in neurodegenerative diseases, including her recent published work on gelsolin peptides and TDP-43 protein studies. In her research, Josephine aims to understand and eradicate current knowledge gaps in protein pathogenic research and elucidate specific mechanistic pathways for the discovery of various treatments for neuronal-based diseases. After completing her M.Sc., Josephine will continue to explore research endeavours in the biomedical and pharmaceutical fields, either continuing in a PhD stream partnered with industrial companies or attending medical school.Josephine’s passion about writing has allowed her to advocate and continue to be the communicative voice between science and policy-making, as well as continue to raise awareness of science-related topics as a way of increasing the sense of wonderment about relevant scientific discoveries.Twitter @jos_esposto

Adam Fortais, PhD candidate at McMaster University

As a mechanical engineering associate, Nicole Imeson oversees the construction of plumbing, HVAC, and fire protection systems in new and renovated buildings across western Canada.  In her spare time, she hosts and produces a podcast about engineering failures called Failurology.  Twitter @Failurology 

Rhonda Moore (Conference Chair) is a self-professed Science Policy Geek and who has worked for more than 15 years at the intersection of communications, research, and policy analysis and development. By day, Rhonda is Practice Lead, Science and Innovation at the Institute on Governance, a non-partisan, non-profit think tank in Ottawa that produces independent research, offers professional development training, and advisory services. She thrives on big ideas and is fuelled by coffee and single malt Scottish whisky. Twitter @R_mmoore

Sarah Neresian is a passionate researcher and science communicator who loves to share scientific knowledge through illustrations and other visual communication strategies. She is a PhD Candidate, Killam Laureate and Vanier Scholar in Microbiology and Immunology at Dalhousie University. With her unique expertise combining scientific communication strategies with illustration and graphic design, she founded Designs that Cell (DTC, www.designsthatcell.ca) in 2017. DTC has grown to a team of talented post-graduate, graduate and undergraduate students who hold advanced degrees and have experience in graphic design, science communication or illustration. Twitter @NersesianSarah 

Cristina Sanza is a Digital Journalism Instructor in the Department of Journalism at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec. There, she is the Associate Editor of The City, the department’s multimedia digital magazine that is produced throughout the undergrad program’s capstone course. Cristina also manages the Concordia Science Journalism Project team and coordinates the Projected Futures international science journalism graduate summer school. She is interested in new forms of journalism storytelling and production, particularly when it comes to scientific and health topics. Cristina has worked as a small-town community journalist, a multimedia content producer in healthcare communications, and as a freelancer. Outside of journalism, Cristina enjoys playing music, tackling a heavy deadlift and developing recipes for baked goods.

Kevin Sauvé is Head of Knowledge Translation at the GSC. He is responsible for managing the development and delivery of strategies and materials that help the GSC disseminate its research to the scientific community and beyond. He has more than a decade of experience in science writing, communication and journalism and is familiar with health care policy and administration through work with the Provincial Health Services Authority. He’s been a communications consultant for scientists, academics, engineers and policy analysts, and specializes in translating complex information for target audiences. Kevin has also worked as a writer and producer with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and as a journalist with the Globe and Mail. He holds a Master of Journalism from the University of British Columbia, concentrated on science writing and science policy, and a Bachelor in Biological Science from the University of Guelph, focused on psychology and neuroscience. He is a CBC Joan Donaldson Scholar and the recipient of a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Health Research Communications Award. He has been with the GSC since November 2018.

A former journalist, Marg Sheridan (SWCC Board member) became interested in science communication following a career change into Corporate Communications. Stints with the Hospital for Sick Kids in Toronto and an Communications Coordinator position with the College of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan left her with the realization that, despite not having a science background, she enjoyed writing about the people behind the scenes in medicine. She now works and resides in Ottawa. Twitter @MargSheridan

A botanist at the Canadian Museum of Nature, Paul Sokoloff's work boils down to cataloguing plant biodiversity in the Arctic and beyond. On any given day, he may be in a faraway place doing field work, in the museum's herbarium studying plant specimens or in the lab analyzing DNA of Arctic plants. In the quest for science, he's had his clothes stolen in southern Labrador, flipped over a canoe full of samples in New Brunswick's Jacquet River, and come face to face with curious wildlife on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut.

Paul first came to the Canadian Museum of Nature as a master's student. Two days after submitting his thesis, he was on a plane bound for Victoria Island in the Western Canadian Arctic as a museum field assistant and he hasn't looked back since. Since then, Paul has embarked on nine Arctic expeditions with the museum, and participated in multiple biodiversity surveys at the Mars Desert Research Station in southern Utah. Twitter @paul_sokoloff

Robert Wager