2014 Young Scientist Award Winner, Stephanie DeWitte-Orr
Dr. Stephanie DeWitte-Orr, Assistant Professor in the Health Sciences Program at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, received the 2014 Young Scientist Award at the World Forum on Biology, held in Savannah, Georgia, USA as a joint meeting of the Society for In Vitro Biology and the Society for Cryobiology. Dr. DeWitte-Orr is a rising star in the field of innate immune responses to viruses, specifically focusing on how cells respond to viral double-stranded RNA.
Stephanie began her academic networking with the SIVB where in 2004, she received the Joseph Morgan Award, the Honor Fell award, the Cellular Toxicology award and a student travel award while she was a PhD student at the University of Waterloo (UW) in Canada. Stephanie graduated with top honours from UW in 2006, receiving the WB Pearson medal for creative research in PhD thesis in Biology at UW’s convocation in 2007. She also received the Faculty of Health Sciences PostDoctoral Outstanding Achievement award from McMaster University in 2010. In 2011, she received a tenure-track position from Laurier as Assistant Professor in the Health Sciences Program as well as in the Department of Biology. She quickly got a research program established despite teaching several new courses including large classes of over 250 students, and currently is supervising several MSc and Honours thesis students. Her MSc student, Sarah Poynter is following in her steps and this year, she was also the recipient of SIVB’s Morgan award as well as earning the top poster award for IVACS. Stephanie’s research is funded by an NSERC discovery grant in Canada (equivalent to NSF grants) as well as several other grants including a large infrastructure award from the Canadian Fund for Innovation. Stephanie has been quite involved with SIVB in the past few years, presenting as an invited speaker at the SIVB meeting in June 2010, organizing and chairing a session at the SIVB’s World Congress in 2012, as well as being the current Chair of SIVB’s Constitution and Bylaws committee. Stephanie’s work on innate immune responses to viruses span a wide area of research with applications across vertebrates, from fish to humans. Despite her relatively recent PhD, Stephanie already has over 20 peer reviewed publications under her belt and is ramping up her work with her students. She truly represents the spirit of the Young Scientist and even manages to juggle motherhood (she has a 2.5 yr old toddler and a year old baby boy) in between her teaching, research and service work. A remarkable young woman and role model to many future scientists.
Submitted by Lucy EJ Lee, Dean, Faculty of Science, UFV
