Dr. Tak Mak Talks

Wes — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:49:27 +0000

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.

5 Weeks of Freedom

Wes — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:53:44 +0000

I am finally back in Canada after what can only be described as a tornado of a year. Even in this last week, I have had to decide to either give up on some of my ambitions or at least put them on hold. I was able to use my time in Spain to re-prioritize things in my life and with a little help from “The House of God” by Samuel Shem, I have realized the worse is yet to come. There are still some things I would like to get done this summer with my 5 Weeks of Freedom.

1) Shoot another short film. Jeff and I are working on a heist film. There is still some details that need to be worked out but I think it is very doable if we jump on this quick before my trip to Mexico.

2) Medical RPG. I’m currently in production of creating a PC game of the Medical RPG genre (not sure if such exists yet). At first I was thinking of using XNA and C# but my artistic skills leave something to be desired so I might resort to a oldschool sprite 2D RPG and save people my horrible drawing skills and hope that my epic story will save the horrible graphics.

3) Campus Radio. Ya you heard me. I’m crazy. I’m thinking about starting a campus radio at RCSI. I will need alot of help, so this one might not happen.

Ontop of all the things I want to do, there is still a ton of stuff I HAVE to do.

Create the Surgical Soc Site
Mexico
Paediatric Observership
5k Race
10k Race
Work
Study

Its an ambitious timeline I will admit that, but I like a challenge.

Wes Wilson » canada

Dr. Tak Mak Talks

5 Weeks of Freedom