DECEMBER 2009
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VOLUME 9
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ISSUE FOUR
In every corner of the globe
the UNIVERSITY OF LETHBRIDGE
Horns’ Mike O’Brien an allaround talent
Markin Hall moving towards completion
Archaeologist dips into our nation’s past
Alumnus proves to be entrepreneur
U of L students and alumni show their colours while on deployment in Afghanistan.
W
hen you think of the University of Lethbridge’s global reach, you might not initially think of a connection to the current war in Afghanistan. However, that’s just where some members of the U of L student and alumni community are right now, based in Kandahar, Afghanistan, literally and figuratively one of the world’s hot spots. An on-site Tim Horton’s provides some measure of familiarity, as does regular e-mail and other contact with friends and family, but there is no question that for these young men and others serving in the Canadian
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flag with Cpl. Andrew McDonald (middle) who graduated in 2006 with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, and (right) Calgary police officer and Lt. Kevin Collier, who holds a Bachelor of Management degree in Accounting, which he obtained in 2004. As well, U of L alumnus Tyler Paynton (BA ’07) a member of the 18th Air Defence Regiment in Lethbridge, is also serving in Afghanistan but was not able to be in the photograph. To send a brief message to Keenan Geiger or his colleagues in Afghanistan, e-mail communications @uleth.ca and the notes will be forwarded.
Golden effort for U of L iGEM team By BOB COONEY
The U of L Legend is published monthly during the academic year by the communications unit within University Advancement. Submissions, comments and story ideas are always welcome. The Legend reserves the right to refuse any submitted advertisement. The Legend can be found online at www.uleth.ca/unews/ legend. Next content deadline is Dec. 18, 2009.
Forces overseas, the war is more than a 30-second clip on the evening news. In this submitted photo, Bombardier (Bdr) Keenan Geiger (l) is a current fourth-year Edmonton campus management student majoring in Human Resources. Now taking a break from school, he is on a sevenmonth deployment in Afghanistan as a reserve member of the Canadian Forces. His unit is part of the 20th Field Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery, based in Edmonton. Geiger is the nephew of Naomi Cramer, an administrator in the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience. Geiger shows off a U of L
A group of University of Lethbridge Chemistry/Biochemistry and Neuroscience students returned from a recent international genetically-engineered machines (iGEM) conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, MA as gold medalists and with a new appreciation for teamwork, inventiveness and taking chances. The iGEM competition is regarded as the premier undergraduate synthetic biology competition in the World. Student teams are given a kit of biological parts – called ‘BioBricks’ – at the beginning of the summer from the Registry of Standard Biological Parts. Working at their own schools, they use these parts, along with new parts of their own design, to build biological systems. They then operate these systems in living cells. The 8-person U of L team worked on harvesting solar energy by refining what was termed a ‘biobattery’, focusing on a type of bacteria called a cyanobacteria (also known as blue-green algae) that has photosynthetic properties when exposed to sunlight. “My iGEM experience, or my introduction to synthetic biology,
began and ended with a bang,” says team member Megan Torry.
“My iGEM experience, or my introduction to synthetic biology, began and ended with a bang.”
Megan Torry
“The competition was intriguing because it introduced me to a future that we cannot grasp. We have no idea of the vast number of possibilities of where the world will take us, and our future decisions regarding change. There does not seem to be an academic program that is as multidisciplinary as iGEM. People from numerous backgrounds can come together and offer the team different perspectives and skills, further making it a University of Lethbridge goal to get more students involved.” The U of L iGEM team was one of the few composed mainly of undergraduate students, and competed against more than 100 univer-
sity teams to finish with a gold medal standing, one of 48 groups to achieve that mark. They share their iGEM Gold Medal standing with such heavyweight universities as Stanford, Tokyo, Osaka, Johns Hopkins, Paris, and Cambridge, among others. They even outdid the incomparable Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) itself. Team supervisor Dr. HansJoachim Wieden says the team did a tremendous job of making their project not only work, but also be complete enough to have other teams take an interest in their research. “The team constructed some functional biobricks by successfully using synthetic biology to engineer an organism. We also furthered knowledge within the synthetic biology community and helped other teams with their projects. This is a lot of work, which the students take on in their spare time.” Torry and the others didn’t seem to mind the time commitment or the complexity of their project. As successful as the project ultimately was, changes and chances were the order of the day to make the project work. continued on pg. 3