Pushing the boundaries

A biochemist, an art educator and an engineer win UVic’s top graduate student prizes

by Beth Haysom

In spite of their widely differing domains, all three of UVic’s 2006 graduate-level medal winners are totally hands-on and enjoy pushing boundaries when it comes to life and their university careers.

Wade Abbott spends days—and often nights—doing postdoctoral research in one of UVic’s biochemistry labs, where he’s experimenting with how sugars and proteins interact.

Rachel Hellner, who teaches in UVic’s art education department, has a blowtorch in her art toolbox and believes that you can’t be an effective teacher without paint and clay under your fingernails.

Shawn Litster, an avid mountain biker, went from fixing bike sprockets to studying mechanical engineering. Having completed his master’s at UVic last year, he’s now at Stanford working on the latest fuel cell technology in California’s Silicon Valley.

For their individual achievements, all three graduate students are being awarded medals at convocation this month.

Wade Abbott wins the Governor General’s Gold Medal for his PhD thesis on variants of histones, the major protein component of “chromatin,” which he was researching between 2000 and 2005 with Dr. Juan Ausio in UVic’s biochemistry and microbiology department.

Chromatin acts as a scaffold for our genetic code and is central to almost every field of biological study. Much of Abbott’s research has led to greater scientific understanding of how genes are regulated and what may go wrong during the disease process.

The award, earned in part for a high grade point average and for his excellent publication record (11 scientific papers during his PhD), is especially sweet for Abbott, who was once uncertain of which profession to pursue and dropped out of college for a spell.

“I didn’t have any direction in my life and I got discouraged. At that time, education didn’t seem like it would be the right route for me,” says Abbott, who credits his religious faith and family support for turning him around.

Now Abbott, who married at age 19, squeezes every moment from the hourglass to balance the demands of his academic career and family life with his wife, Raija, and three children Kaylie 11, Madi, 6, and Levi, 4.

“Quite often I’ve tucked the children into bed and then come back to the lab to work on specific projects or to set up experiments for the next day,” says Abbott. “Fortunately, I live close by [to UVic].”

In spite of his hectic schedule, Abbott also makes a point of visiting his children’s local school and demonstrating simple science experiments such as the different bacteria we can find on our hands.

“The kids really love it when I show up,” says Abbott. “I think it’s good for them to see that scientists are not just locked up in laboratories, that they are real people involved in the everyday world.”

Similarly, Rachel Hellner loves the alchemy of teaching art, especially in a classroom full of students who consider themselves non-artists.

“These students are often people who have been discouraged in the past and they’re quite fearful,” says Hellner. “Gradually, they relax and open themselves to the experience and realize that art is accessible to everyone. It’s really rewarding.”

Hellner has won the Lieutenant Governor’s Silver Medal (other than thesis) for her master’s degree treatise, The Importance of Studio Practice, a suggested methodology book for art teachers. It’s based on her own life and experiences as an artist, using art in therapeutic settings and as an art teacher.

As far as Hellner is concerned, you can’t teach art from a textbook. “It’s not just about the techniques,” she says. “Art teachers need a profound understanding of what it means to be immersed in studio practice, so they can be role models and help their students truly understand the feelings and emotion involved in creating art.”

Hellner, who has been part of several exhibitions locally and in Winnipeg where her family now lives, finds art inspiration and philosophy go hand-in-hand. A series of paintings on “recyclables” picked up around Victoria streets focussed her dismay on society’s throwaway attitudes. Road kill spotted on the Florida turnpike became the subject for another series reflecting on Western society’s car dependence and its impact on animals and the environment.

For Hellner, art has always been part of her life: “I’ve had a pencil in my hand ever since I can remember,” she says. “As a child I’d sit around the kitchen table with my family and we’d be drawing together.”

Now, as well as a pencil, Hellner uses acrylics, oil pastels, graphite— and sometimes a blowtorch—to achieve special effects. She also goes to great heights, even parachuting from a plane to achieve an aerial view of landscapes that she wanted to paint.

Shawn Litster discovered his vocation jumping off precipices and hurtling down steep trails around B.C. while competing nationally in downhill mountain bike racing.

“Of course we always had to fix something on the bikes. That’s what got me interested in engineering in the first place,” says Litster from Stanford, where he’s working on a PhD. Google is down the street, Yahoo around the corner and technological dreams become reality in nanoseconds.

Litster is the winner of the Lieutenant Governor’s Silver Medal for his master’s thesis on mathematical modeling of fuel cells for portable devices, a system that enables companies to experiment easily and cheaply with the potential new energy source, from which the only byproduct is water released as harmless vapour.

Although people are familiar with this research for fuel cell-powered cars, Litster realizes it’s something of a leap to consider we’ll be carrying around mini fuel cell-powered laptops, cellphones and MP3s. But, he says, we’d better get ready to jump.

“The way things are going, I think these [fuel cell-powered] devices will be available in a niche market within the next two years,” says Litster. He envisions a not-too-distant future where the technology is commonplace and we’ll all be picking up our rechargeable mini fuel-cell canisters at convenience stores.

Meantime Litster, who became widely known during his stint at UVic as co-host of “Soundcheck,” a CFUV Friday night show featuring ska and reggae music, has more imminent excitement.

He’s returning home this summer to marry Kristin McLennan, who he met while both were undergraduates at UVic. Eventually, the couple would like to return to live in B.C. “I’d love to come back and teach at a B.C. university,” says Litster. “B.C. still has the best mountain biking anywhere.”