UVic Faculty of Science

UVic Faculty of Science Our six units—Biology, Biochemistry & Microbiology, Chemistry, Earth & Ocean Sciences, Mathematics Twitter:

From the atom to the universe, from the cell to the ecosystem, from the theoretical to the applied, we are the Faculty of Science at the University of Victoria, located in the capital of British Columbia. The Faculty of Science is comprised of 6 units: Biochemistry & Microbiology, Biology, Chemistry, Earth & Ocean Sciences, Mathematics & Statistics and Physics & Astronomy.

We're hiring a new Development Officer!Come join the Faculty of Science and help connect people who want to make a diffe...
10/07/2026

We're hiring a new Development Officer!

Come join the Faculty of Science and help connect people who want to make a difference through philanthropy with the remarkable research, people and ideas emerging from our Faculty.

The Development Officer is responsible for developing and advancing philanthropic fundraising initiatives that cultivate major and principal gifts.

🔗 View the job description: https://ow.ly/zFa150ZVeYO

10/06/2026

Oh, the ethical dilemmas that come along with AI.

Who decides which human values and societal norms AI should follow?

Can algorithms be biased, and if they are, who is responsible?

How much transparency are we owed in a world of AI?

Exolore all these questions and more at this year's Lipson Lecture, The AI Alignment Problem with bestselling author and researcher Brian Christian.

🗓 Oct. 18, 3 p.m., UVic's Farquhar Auditorium
🎟 purchase.tickets.uvic.ca

10/05/2026

Oh, the ethical dilemmas that come along with AI.

Who decides which human values and societal norms AI should follow?

Can algorithms be biased, and if they are, who is responsible?

How much transparency are we owed in a world of AI?

Explore all these questions and more at this year's Lipson Lecture, The AI Alignment Problem with bestselling author Brian Christian.

🗓 Oct. 18, 3p.m., UVic's Farquhar Auditorium
🎟 purchase.tickets.uvic.ca

New hires, promotions and a couple of retirements. Every year, our faculty complement changes slightly. This year, we've...
09/28/2026

New hires, promotions and a couple of retirements.

Every year, our faculty complement changes slightly. This year, we've welcomed two new faculty members:

📌Xiaomeng Ju (MATH) is a statistician whose work has a Bayesian focus and is motivated by applications in medical imaging. She is also interested in robust methods for data with outliers and in statistical machine learning.

📌Adrian Marchetti (BIOL and SEOS) is a biological oceanographer whose research focuses on phytoplankton ecophysiology and genomics. He combines traditional oceanographic methods with advanced methods in molecular sequencing to better understand the important roles that phytoplankton play in biogeochemical cycles.

We've also promoted six faculty members, and waved goodbye to two as they headed off into retirement.

🔗Read about all the changes: https://ow.ly/aMnw50ZQQMC

09/25/2026

Not even the rain could stop us from celebrating our 2025-26 Dean's List students today. 🥳

Every year, the top 10% of students (first-year, in-program and graduating) are named to the Dean's List. It's our way of honoring exceptional academic performance.

Hopefully we'll see you there next year!

Artificial intelligence (AI) and ethics can be a bit of a messy space. Come get dirty with us. Join us for the 2026 Lips...
09/22/2026

Artificial intelligence (AI) and ethics can be a bit of a messy space. Come get dirty with us.

Join us for the 2026 Lipson Lecture as we explore the ethics of AI with bestselling author and researcher Brian Christian. Who decides which human values and societal norms AI should follow? Should we trust AI with life-and-death decisions? What happens when an AI finds loopholes in the rules? Dive into all these questions and more.

📅 Sunday, October 18, 2026
⏰ 3 p.m.
📍 Farquhar Auditorium, UVic

🎟️ Get your ticket today for only $5! https://ow.ly/joYK50ZQnJK

UVic PhD graduate Allison Selinger has just been awarded the Royal Society of Canada's Alice Wilson Award, which recogni...
09/16/2026

UVic PhD graduate Allison Selinger has just been awarded the Royal Society of Canada's Alice Wilson Award, which recognizes outstanding academic achievement by emerging women scholars.

As a PhD student, Selinger created new molecules that acted as sensors, changing colour to identify many different kinds of chemical and biological samples, including proteins, tissues and illicit drugs.

Now an NSERC postdoctoral fellow in the Life Sciences Division at TRIUMF, Canada’s national particle accelerator centre, she is applying her expertise in building molecules to develop new radiopharmaceuticals. Focusing her passion for niche details and real-life applications, she's creating radioactive drugs that specifically target tumor cells in cases where cancer has grown and spread through the body.

💬 "The Alice Wilson Award means a great deal of recognition for both my research accomplishments and personal scientific journey. I feel extremely honoured to be among the outstanding women in academia who have received this award. To me, this award honours Alice Wilson’s incredible endurance and perseverance to pursue her passions, despite the many barriers she encountered along the way. This award and her legacy inspire me to push forward in my scientific journey, to follow curiosity and seek new ways to continuously learn and grow.”

- Allison Selinger, PhD

🔗 Learn more about UVic's 2 Alice Wilson Award recipients: https://ow.ly/l77g50ZO5cZ

UVic astrophysicist Sara Ellison is officially a member of the Royal Society of Canada!The Royal Society of Canada is Ca...
09/09/2026

UVic astrophysicist Sara Ellison is officially a member of the Royal Society of Canada!

The Royal Society of Canada is Canada's national academy of scholars, artists and scientists. They elect new members annually through a peer-reviewed process that recognizes exceptional achievement and outstanding contributions to research, the arts, humanities, science and public life.

Ellison is a world leader in the study of galaxy evolution and has advanced three distinct fields of astrophysics: high redshift quasar absorption lines, the interstellar medium and galaxy mergers. Her discoveries have opened up major new avenues in galactic chemistry, supermassive black holes and star formation.

🗨️ "I’m honoured to join the Royal Society of Canada and excited to contribute to its important work in strengthening evidence-informed policy, governance and public appreciation of research across all fields. As an astronomer, I’m regularly reminded how our understanding grows when we look beyond immediate horizons, and I look forward to bringing that perspective to the Society’s service to Canada.”

- Sara Ellison, professor of physics and astronomy

🔗 Learn more about UVic's RSC recipients: https://ow.ly/wG7350ZLFUh

How a machine learning model that predicts a cancer subtype led to a $100,000 scholarship. Jason Zhang, a graduate of Mo...
09/03/2026

How a machine learning model that predicts a cancer subtype led to a $100,000 scholarship.

Jason Zhang, a graduate of Mount Doug Secondary School, is this year's Schulich Leader Scholar for the Faculty of Science, receiving a $100,000 scholarship to support his studies.

Jason was a stand-out science fair competitor in grade 11 and 12, winning bronze and silver medals at the national science fair. Inspired by a breast cancer diagnosis in his family, he used publicly available gene expression data from breast cancer patients to develop a machine learning model that could predict a patient's cancer subtype with 93% accuracy.

Jason was also head of the science fair club at his high school and a senior coach of the Math Challengers club. He also ran cross-country.

Jason hopes to pursue a career in bioinformatics by combining his interests in science, computing and data analysis, and plans to study data science at UVic.

🔗 Read more about this year's Schulich Scholars: https://ow.ly/Rb3n50ZJ1Xy

Our expertise in phytoplankton and climate change research is growing! Biological oceanographer Adrian Marchetti has rec...
08/27/2026

Our expertise in phytoplankton and climate change research is growing!

Biological oceanographer Adrian Marchetti has recently arrived at UVic as the BC Leadership Chair in Marine Ecosystems and Global Change. His research focuses on phytoplankton ecophysiology and genomics, looking to better understand the important roles that phytoplankton play in global biogeochemical cycles.

Marchetti’s work combines traditional oceanographic methods with molecular biology. He uses advanced methods in molecular sequencing, such as genomics, transcriptomics and metatranscriptomics, to better understand the taxonomic, functional and genetic diversity of phytoplankton.

🗨️ "It’s an indisputable fact that our oceans are changing, from nutrient cycles to the distribution of organisms to the organisms themselves. Phytoplankton are at the very base of our food chain and are responsible for half of the oxygen we breathe. They are often the first to show changes, acting as the canary in the coal mine and raising the alarm. This makes understanding how phytoplankton are changing critically important.”

- Adrian Marchetti, BC Leadership Chair and Professor of Earth & Ocean Sciences and Biology

🔗 Learn more about Marchetti and his research: https://ow.ly/uUpQ50ZFW39

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