Collaborative Specialization Seminar
The Collaborative Specialization in Next-Generation in Precision Medicine provides PhD students a diverse and cross-disciplinary approach to training. It is designed to expose trainees to many disciplines—bridging expertise in the natural sciences and engineering with understanding of the life sciences—to address the unmet challenges of human disease.
Join us for a seminar featuring this year's Collaborative Specialization program students. At the session, we will briefly review the requirements for application to the program and we will hear from the Collaborative Specialization students who will present short talks on their interdisciplinary research.
Date: Friday, June 19, 2026, 12:30 - 2:00PM (Lunch will be provided)
Location: Red Seminar Room, Terrence Donnelly Centre, 160 College Street
Speakers:
Mahya Rezaeifarimani
PhD Candidate, Wu Lab
“Exploiting Tumour Microenvironment-triggered Reactivity of Manganese Dioxide for Radiation Sensitization of Glioblastoma”
Mahya Rezaeifarimani received her BSc Honours in Chemistry with specialization in Pharmaceutical and Biological Chemistry from York University in 2023. She previously worked on the synthesis and characterization of quantum dots, studying their photocatalytic properties. Currently, Mahya is a Third-year PhD student in Dr. Shirley Wu’s lab in the department of Pharmaceutical Science at UofT. She is studying the enhanced radiation sensitization effects of BBB penetrative MnO2 loaded nanoparticles and metformin in GBM tumour models, along with designing new nanoparticle formulations for mapping and detection of tumour hypoxia.
Ariel Corsano
PhD Candidate, Pardee Lab
“High-Throughput Discovery of Orthogonal Cas12 Systems for Multiplexed Point-of-Need Diagnostics”
Ariel Corsano obtained her BEng in Bioengineering from McGill University, specializing in the cellular, tissue, and molecular engineering stream. She joined the Pardee Lab in 2023, and is in the 3rd year of her PhD program, where her research is focused on developing multiplexed nucleic acid diagnostics using CRISPR-Cas technology. Furthermore, she is a trainee in the PRiME collaborative specialization in Next-Generation Precision Medicine, and the recipient of the Pharmaceutical Sciences Graduate Student Association Fellowship.
Rana Ahmed Barghout
PhD Candidate, Mahadevan and Sanchez-Lengeling Labs
“How do protein representations encode variant function? Diagnosing residue-level attribution via embedding-space gradients”
Rana Ahmed Barghout is a final year PhD student working under the Laboratory for Metabolic Systems Engineering (Prof. Radhakrishnan Mahadevan) and the Chemical Cognition Lab (Prof. Benjamin Sanchez-Lengeling). Her research focuses on applying machine learning to proteins and genome-scale metabolic contexts.
Ella Rajaonson
PhD Candidate, Aspuru-Guzik and Sanchez-Lengeling Labs
“On the Selectivity of Generative Models in Structure-Based Drug Design”
Ella Rajaonson is a PhD student in Chemistry at the University of Toronto advised by Prof. Aspuru-Guzik and Prof. Sanchez-Lengeling. Her research interests include applications of machine learning to molecular formulations property prediction and structure-base drug design.