Science & Technology
People
A marriage of art and technology
Chloë Ryan is an artist, a McGill-trained engineer, and the CEO/founder of Acrylic Robotics. Her company plans to partner with artists to make high-quality reproductions of their work – right down to the brushstrokes – by using robots and AI. The goal is to help artists find new markets for their creations.
On Campus
Combatting quackery
Dedicated to promoting science literacy and to pushing back against misinformation, McGill’s Office for Science and Society (OSS) regularly reaches large audiences through a variety of means (podcasts, newspaper columns, YouTube, online courses) to further its mission of “separating sense from nonsense.”
Webcasts
The magic of a solar eclipse
Don’t miss the latest edition of the McGill News webcast where the focus is on the celestial event of a lifetime.
People
Science with ‘a funky, cool vibe’
As an immunologist, Frederic Bertley, BSc’94, PhD’00, once worked on vaccines for HIV/AIDS at Harvard. Now, he shares his passion for discovery as the head of an award-winning science museum in the U.S.
Society
Reflecting on a year without the internet
For a full 12 months, McGill faculty lecturer Aron Lee Rosenberg, MA’19, PhD’23, avoided smartphones, social media and email. His new book raises questions about how we interact with the internet
Health
Betting big on open science
The Neuro and its Tanenbaum Open Science Institute are committed to making its research as freely available and transparent as possible, while encouraging other neuroscience institutions to do the same.
Discovery
Innovative depression app gets million-dollar boost
Created by four McGill alums, Aifred Health is developing an app that uses AI to speed up the process for finding the right medications to treat patients with clinical depression. Aifred recently scored a huge win, earning $1 million USD in the international IBM Watson AI XPRIZE competition.
Discovery
Shedding light on the inventor gender gap
Men are still far more likely than women to be inventors – and that might have a big impact on the availability of new medical technologies that benefit women. “Does who gets opportunities to invent affect what gets invented?” asks McGill’s John-Paul Ferguson.
Health
McGill’s Moderna connection
Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine is one of the planet’s best hopes for prevailing against a pandemic that has affected millions around the world. Noubar Afeyan, BEng’83 (pictured), is the company's co-founder, while Hamilton Bennett, BSc(FSc)’07, is one of the principal players leading Moderna’s vaccine efforts.
Discovery
“Talking” to Perseverance: A Mars veteran’s new mission
Did life exist on Mars about 3.7 billion years ago? Telecom systems engineer Peter Ilott, BSc’80, PhD’88, has been part of four successive NASA rover missions to the red planet.
Discovery
An early warning system for COVID in communities
In February, 2020, when the world changed, Newsha Ghaeli, MArch’13, and her company quickly adapted.
Discovery
The quest for a low-cost ventilator for the world
Even before COVID, “there were already a lot of people dying every year from the lack of ventilators,” says Reza Farivar, MSc’02, PhD’08. Together with the Montreal General Hospital Foundation, the McGill Engine, and others, he is leading an ambitious effort to change that.