Six trainees from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) took up the Cooperathon open innovation challenge this year. Never having worked together before, Erin Goddard, PhD, Kashif Khan, Julien Mégrourèche, Catherine Pan, Palina Piankova and Surashri Shinde formed a team to meet a challenge launched by the Desjardins Centre for Advanced Training at the RI-MUHC. Their goal was to find novel solutions for bridging the gap between schools and our research community.  

In only 25 days they created a new organization called connecXscience that brings interdisciplinary science outreach to secondary students in Montreal. Of the 104 teams participating in the semi-finals, theirs was one of only four teams to make it to the Education Track of the Cooperathon Finals held on November 1, 2018. 

“We want young people to understand that if a particular subject or cause calls out to them, there are a thousand and one ways of basing a career on that,” said Julien Mégrourèche, a master’s student in medical radiation physics supervised by Shirin Abbasinejad Enger, PhD. “We’re convinced that our multidisciplinary activities will arouse the scientific curiosity in youth as never before!”

—Published November 13, 2018