The Early Career Award recognizes current members of the SIVB who are outstanding early-career scientists and who have made significant contributions to the field of in vitro biology and/or in the development of novel technologies that have advanced in vitro biology. The Society for In Vitro Biology honored Dr. Nathan Vo with the Early Career Award at the 2025 In Vitro Biology Meeting in Norfolk, VA.
Dr. Nathan Vo
2025 SIVB Early Career Award Recipient
Nguyen (Nathan) Vo, an Assistant Professor in the Health Sciences Program at Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU) in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, received the 2025 Early Career Award (ECA) at the annual meeting of the Society for In Vitro Biology (SIVB), held in Norfolk, Virginia, USA, in recognition of his outstanding contributions and achievements in the in vitro sciences. Although he was unable to attend in person to receive the award, he was ecstatic to receive this acknowledgement as he has been involved with SIVB since his undergraduate days over 15 years ago. While Nathan was a PhD student at the University of Waterloo (UW) in Canada (2010 – 2015), he began his academic networking with SIVB winning the Cellular Toxicology award in 2012, as well as the student travel award and the Wilton Earle award in 2013. Nathan graduated with top honours from UW in 2015, receiving the WB Pearson medal for creative research in PhD thesis in Biology. He also received the Young Alumnus of the Year award from WLU in 2017. Nathan had post-doctoral positions at Waterloo, Laurier, and MacMaster universities, and in 2020, he received a prestigious Ontario Minister of Colleges and Universities’ Award of Excellence for university teaching.
Nathan Vo (left) connects with various Marine and Invertebrate Cell Culture SIVB Members at the 2024 World Congress on In Vitro Biology.
Nathan joined Laurier’s Department of Health Studies as a full-time faculty member in 2022 and teaches Applied Health Sciences and Physical Forensics courses albeit his expertise is in in vitro biology of aquatic vertebrates. In recent years (post-COVID), he has been increasing his involvement with SIVB as presenter, panelist, session organizer and chair, journal editor, etc., and has been impacting the careers of many students, young scientists and colleagues. He supervises undergraduate student research projects in an array of projects involving cell line development and applications in immunology, toxicology, radiation biology and biotechnology. He collaborates widely with researchers at Laurier, Waterloo and MacMaster as a research associate, as well as in private ventures as scientific advisor.
Nathan is only the second Canadian to be awarded the ECA distinction. The first was Dr Stephanie DeWitte-Orr, also from WLU, who won the 2014 award under an earlier iteration as the SIVB Young Scientist Award.
Nathan’s work with fish and other vertebrate cell lines spans a wide area of research from basic biology to immunology, toxicology, radiation biology, biophysics, biotechnology, etc. He has already published over 55 peer reviewed manuscripts, half of them as first author, and has collaborated with scientists in diverse research areas with applications across vertebrates, from fish to humans. Nathan is a remarkable early career professional with diverse interests and has been a great role model to many future scientists.
Submitted by Lucy EJ Lee, Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Science, UFV & Vivian Dayeh, Associate Professor, Department of Biology. University of Waterloo
