Tag Archives: As the Future Catches You

Café Scientifique Vancouver (Canada) talk on October 30th, 2018: Solving some of Canada’s grandest challenges with synthetic biology

From an October 16, 2018 Café Scientifique Vancouver announcement (received via email),

Our next café will happen on TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30TH at 7:30PM in the
back room at YAGGER’S DOWNTOWN (433 W Pender). Our speaker for the
evening will be DR. VIKRAMADITYA G. YADAV. His topic will be:

SOLVING SOME OF CANADA’S GRANDEST CHALLENGES WITH SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY

A warming climate, unrepressed mining and logging, contamination of our
water resources, the uncertain price and tight supply of crude oil and
the growing threat of epidemics are having a profound, negative impact
on the well-being of Canadians. There is an urgent need to develop and
implement sustainable manufacturing technologies that can not only meet
our material and energy needs, but also sustain our quality of life.
Romantic and unbelievable as it sounds, Nature posses all the answer to
our challenges, and the coming decades in science and engineering will
be typified by our attempts to mimic or recruit biology to address our
needs. This talk will present a vivid snapshot of current and emerging
research towards this goal and highlight some cutting-edge technologies
under development at the University of British Columbia [UBC].

When he joined the University of Waterloo as an undergraduate student in
chemical engineering, Dr. Vikramaditya G. Yadav coveted a career in
Alberta’s burgeoning petrochemical sector. He even interned at Imperial
Oil during his first summer break from university. Then, one fine
evening during second year, he stumbled upon a copy of Juan Enríquez’s
As the Future Catches You in the library and became instantly captivated
with biological engineering. His journey over the past few years has
taken him to Sanofi Pasteur [vaccines division of the multinational
pharmaceutical
company Sanofi], the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT],
Harvard University, and finally, the University of British Columbia,
where he now leads a wonderful group of researchers working on
wide-ranging topics at the interface of biology, chemistry, engineering,
medicine and economics.

We hope to see you there!

Oftentimes, the speaker is asked to write up a description of their talk and assuming that’s the case and based on how it’s written, I’d say the odds are good that this will be a lively, engaging talk.

For more proof, you can check out Dr. Yadav’s description of his research interests on his UBC profile page. BTW, his research group is called The Biofoundry (at UBC).