Wes Wilson

Okay, so clearly I am way to busy to make regular witty posts like I use to. But I will try to catch everything up with small picture posts. Last year was my first experience at the Detroit Marathon. It was a fun, if not knee destroying experience where I couldn’t walk properly for 2 weeks.

I hope to make one post a day until I catch up with my major activities to 2010

Yesterday Dr. Tak Mak gave a guest lecture at the University of Windsor. If you don’t know who Dr. Tak Mak is I suggest a quick google search , but in short he is one of Canada’s greatest scientists with over 40,000 papers citing his work and a shoe in for the nobel prize for discovering the T cell receptor in 1984. He currently works out of the University of Toronto conducting cancer research.

Thankfully I still know many grad students at UofW and was able to attend both the public lecture at night and the private, more scientific, lecture during the day. The talks were both entertaining and thought provoking as he opened up the discussion on the usefulness of oncogene targeted cancer therapies for research and if it is really where we should be focusing.

Since researchers at the lecture focus on this type of research (Spy1 and PTEN) and you could really feel the clash of ideas flowing. Dr. Mak’s lab of course does research on the areas he was suggesting people shouldn’t look into as well as areas he suggested they should. He also made note that the two greatest cancer drugs are targeted therapies (Herceptin and Gleevec) but believes the answer to curing cancer lies in targeting metabolic processes. His lecture was more about keeping an open mind about how we look to solve problems as well getting the whole picture and never stop questioning how things are done.

One of most memorable moments of the public talk (for me anyway) was referring to Archimedes’ passion for science and experimentation. When the roman’s finally captured Syracuse a guard came running up to him, sword drawn, and ready to kill. Archimedes asked the soldier to hold off killing him until he finished an experiment he was working on. The soldier didn’t understand and killed him. Dr. Mak remarks that it is this kind of passion for science that will shape tomorrow but as he puts it “if someone runs at you with a sword, run away!”

It was a real honour to meet Dr. Mak and I got that same feeling in my gut while talking to him as I did when I met Adam West (Batman). After the lecture we headed to the keg for some drinks and some discussion about potential cancer research targets. I’m not going lie, it was a great night.

Taking a a little vacation tomorrow. Ideas for a day trip anyone?

Last week RTE One needed a Student to Interview on a puff piece about student life, and I happily obliged. As cheesy as it was, I really enjoy’ed it.

The show is broadcast live so I had to head into the studio early for rehearsal and mic check. Then a friendly stage manger led me from place to place and finally to the green room to wait for my big debut. I sat in comfy couches watching an Aussie soap opera and a gardening expert talk about what winter plants to grow. I laughed out loud when it clicked in my head that it was getting into ‘Irish winter weather’. After explaining my outburst to one of the hosts, she explained that Irish winter is cold, just a different kind of cold. I agreed with a comparison of Irish winter being ‘plant in your garden weather’ and Canadian winter being ‘build a snow man weather’.

The hosts and staff were super friendly, and if RTE gets pingbacks consider this my official thank you for everything.

I think the best part was just taking part in the fun of putting together the show. It reminded me of ’show night’ back in my theatre days. It was nice to see so many people enjoying their jobs as oppose to the stress I see on everyone’s faces in the hospitals and clinics.

‘The Afternoon Show’ airs live on weekdays @ 4:00pm on RTE One.
More Pics below