Bader Graduate Student & Postdoctoral Scholar Lectures
Manpreet Kaur is currently a fourth-year Ph.D. Candidate in the Smith Department of Chemical Engineering at Queen’s University working under the supervision of Dr. Michael F. Cunningham and Dr. Jagdeep S. Walia. M. Kaur’s research focuses on developing polymer nanoparticles for drug delivery in gene therapy that will be used to target respiratory disorders and brain tumours. M. Kaur is an international student from India, where she received a B.E. in Chemical Engineering in 2019 from Beant College of Engineering & Technology – Gurdaspur (Gurdaspur, Punjab India); M. Kaur moved to Canada in late 2019 and earned a M.Eng. degree from Queen’s University in 2020, later enrolling in the Ph.D. program.
Manpreet Kaur
Elyse Longair is an artist, curator, and image theorist currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies at Queen’s University. E. Longair’s research focuses on collage history, collage as research creation, and institutional strategies of collecting and curating collage. Among recent awards, E. Longair studied collage in Paris at The Centre Pompidou (Paris, France) with support from the David Edney Research Award and was awarded Exposure Emerging Photographer of the Year Award by Exposure Photography Festival earning her a solo exhibition at Contemporary Calgary. E. Longair’s Simple Image Theory in collage re-imagines the role of images away from the overt-complexity that dominates our world, opening up new possibilities for imagined futures.
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Elyse Longair
Dr. Fanwang Meng is a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow in Dr. Farnaz Heidar-Zadeh's group in the Department of Chemistry at Queen's University. Dr. Meng earned his Ph.D. from McMaster University with Dr. Paul W. Ayers and then joined Dr. Connor W. Coley’s lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (Cambridge, Massachusetts USA) for postdoctoral training. Dr. Meng's research centers on computational drug discovery, utilizing machine learning and computational chemistry for molecular property predictions, bioactive compound (hit) identification, and understanding protein structure-function; Dr. Meng has authored 23 peer-reviewed publications. An advocate for open science, Dr. Meng develops sustainable, accessible, and free open-source Python packages, having contributed to 17 software projects and 2 open datasets. Dr. Meng’s commitment to inclusivity and diversity in science has been recognized with several honors, including the MIT Chemical Engineering Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Award, the Outstanding Reviewer Award for Digital Discovery (Royal Society of Chemistry) in 2023, and the Digital Research Alliance of Canada’s Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Champions Pilot Award in 2024.
Anastasia Messina is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Chemistry at Queen’s University under the supervision and mentorship of Dr. Cathleen Crudden. During her B.Sc.H. in Life Science, A. Messina joined the Crudden Group to complete an independent 4th-year thesis under the mentorship of Dr. Dianne Lee. Shortly after, A. Messina joined the Crudden Group as a graduate student, where her research now specializes in organometallic and surface chemistry. A. Messina’s work has been acknowledged through the R.S. McLaughlin Fellowship, a merit-based award for academic distinction, as well as the William Neish Fellowship Award for commitment to innovative research. Along with research, A. Messina also has a passion for teaching and fostering inclusive communities within and beyond academia. A. Messina was awarded the Equity, Diversity, Inclusion & Indigenization (EDII) Fellowship from the Carbon 2 Metal Coating Institute (C2MCI) for her work in promoting diversity and inclusion within the scientific community; A. Messina also received the Friends of Chemistry Award, voted by students and faculty, for going above and beyond in enhancing student learning experiences. As an Executive member of the Queen's Graduate Chemistry Society (QGCS), A. Messina is also heavily involved with the Department of Chemistry at Queen's, working to foster a strong and supportive graduate community.
Keynote Speakers
Dr. Fanwang Meng
Anastasia Messina
Madeleine Dempster is a Ph.D. Candidate at Queen’s University in the Department of Art History & Art Conservation whose research focuses on collecting practices of eighteenth-century French artists. M. Dempster earned a Master’s degree in Art History from Queen’s University in 2021. In 2023, M. Dempster published an article based on her work in the journal Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide and has presented this research at the 2024 annual conference of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. M. Dempster is also a research assistant in the Department of Chemistry at Queen’s University working on the interdisciplinary project “Arts Integration,” created by Dr. Amanda Bongers. In June 2024, M. Dempster presented some of this work at the Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition. M. Dempster previously worked on the interdisciplinary project “Art of Observation,” a joint initiative between the Agnes Etherington Art Centre and the Queen’s University School of Medicine. M. Dempster was recently awarded a Bader Fellowship, and her research is supported by the Government of Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Dr. Ben Glasspoole is the Head of Emerging Chemical Synthesis at MilliporeSigma, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin USA, where Dr. Glasspoole and his group manage the portfolio of chemical building blocks, reagents, and catalysts that evolved from the one-page Aldrich catalog started by the late Dr. Alfred R. Bader over 70 years ago. Dr. Glasspoole earned a Ph.D. from Queen’s University in 2011 working with Dr. Cathleen Crudden on palladium catalysis and materials science before conducting postdoctoral research in total synthesis (And, unexpectedly, ruthenium catalysis methodology) at the University of Texas at Austin (Austin, Texas USA) with Dr. Mike Krische. Since joining what was then Sigma-Aldrich in 2013, Dr. Glasspoole has grown the traditional chemistry portfolio to include synthesis-enabling instruments (e.g., photoreactors), chemical biology, and more recently, digital and predictive tools for chemists. For these efforts, Dr. Glasspoole was recognized by the American Chemical Society’s Business Management Division with the Dr. Nina McClelland Emerging Leader Award in 2024.
Madeleine Dempster
Dr. Ben Glasspoole