The BC-CfE’s Rachel Miller, a master’s candidate working in the Molecular Epidemiology and Evolutionary Genetics group, is now a proud recipient of a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) CREATE scholarship. Miller is using this opportunity primarily to learn more about the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.
The NSERC is the major federal agency responsible for funding natural sciences and engineering research in Canada. The agency’s scholarship means Miller now has a full year of funding and the opportunity to visit and work with the highly-esteemed Dr. Tanja Stadler at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich).
While the world remains under a pandemic, NSERC is leveraging the expertise of researchers in natural science and engineering to address this unprecedented crisis. The Collaborative Research and Training Experience (CREATE) Program is intended for the Canadian researchers of tomorrow. It helps cultivate young researchers like Miller by improving training in areas like communication and collaboration, as well as by providing mentoring and experience.
Dr. Stadler, whom Miller will work with, is a German mathematician and professor of Computational Evolution at the ETH Zurich who is well-known for her work in the field of phylogenetics. Dr. Stadler is a world leader in the development of phylogenetic models and tools. Miller, who is hopeful that international travel restrictions will not keep her from visiting Switzerland by next summer, plans to spend four months interning with Dr. Stadler and learning all she can about COVID-19 as well as HIV.
Miller says, “I am grateful to receive the financial support and very excited to have the chance to learn from a leader as highly regarded as Dr. Stadler.”
Speaking more specifically about her future research, Miller says she “will be using a method recently published by members of Dr. Stadler’s lab to accurately estimate epidemiological parameters by using epidemiological data and molecular data simultaneously. This technique is applicable to the study of many different pathogens, so my learning during the internship will be relevant to my work on HIV as well.”
Epidemiological parameters include data such as case fatality and case recovery ratios, a disease’s basic reproduction number, and per day infection mortality and recovery rates.
Miller said, “So far the COVID-19 pandemic has of course made working a little more inconvenient, but it has also made for an interesting opportunity to apply the phylogenetic methods I already use in my graduate work at the BC-CfE outside of HIV.”
NSERC researchers work at the cutting-edge of scientific innovation, and the BC-CfE is proud to have Miller as a CREATE scholar working to advance understanding of both COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS.