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OVC Student Receives NSERC Scholarship
Award ‘an incredible honour,’ says PhD candidate
BY BARRY GUNN
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| Pathobiology PhD student Melanie Ammersbach will use her Julie Payette-NSERC award to study feline immunodeficiency virus. |
A would-be cartoonist turned veterinary scientist has been awarded a prestigious Julie Payette-NSERC Research Scholarship by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
Melanie Ammersbach, a PhD student in the Department of Pathobiology, is among 24 of Canada’s top-ranked graduate students to receive this year’s scholarship. The $25,000 award, named for the Canadian astronaut who is set to make her second trip to the International Space Station, recognizes academic excellence, research ability and potential, and leadership and communication skills.
“It’s an incredible honour,” says Ammersbach. “The scholarship will certainly help me pursue my research, but it also increases the pressure to perform and live up to expectations.”
She moved straight into the PhD program last fall after graduating from OVC in 2007 and completing a one-year internship in small-animal medicine and surgery at the OVC Teaching Hospital. She is combining the PhD with a residency in clinical pathology, with the goal of finishing the degree and becoming board-certified by the American College of Veterinary Pathologists in five years. For the moment, that means juggling the extra workload and sometimes-conflicting deadlines of the two programs.
“Lately I haven’t had as much microscope time as I would have liked,” she says. “That’s one of the disadvantages of doing the residency along with the PhD. Now that some of my course and planning deadlines have passed, I’m looking forward to spending more time in the lab.”
With the next few years of her life mapped out, Ammersbach reflects that it could have turned out much differently. Born in Belgium, she was 15 when her family moved to Canada in 1998 for her engineer father to pursue what was intended to be a two-year career opportunity. As a high school student in Burlington, she focused on learning English and planned to study animation at college. But instead of graduating in Grade 12 and sketching out a career in the arts, she opted to return for Grade 13 and took some science courses.
“That year completely changed my mind,” she says.
Working with Prof. Dorothee Bienzle, Ammersbach is focusing her research on feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV). She will study the interactions between the virus and the immune system and compare two strains of FIV.
“Fortunately, cats can live a full lifespan before the virus becomes an issue in terms of compromising their immune system,” she says. “But another isolate of FIV has been identified that appears to be more pathogenic. The idea is to compare the two strains of the virus and document the differences. I’ll also be investigating how FIV affects the function of dendritic cells, which are designed to monitor for infection and work with the lymph nodes to trigger an immune response.”
FIV affects only about two per cent of domestic cats in North America but as many as 30 per cent in Japan. Although there are important differences between FIV and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the animal model might one day yield clues about HIV/AIDS in humans, Ammersbach says.
In the meantime, combining a PhD program with a clinical residency gives her the best of both worlds.
“I really enjoy being able to explore scientific questions in great detail and trying to understand things at the deepest level. But I also enjoy the clinics and working with students and clinicians, teaching and discussing concepts one-on-one and helping them find the answers they need to treat their patients.”