Although I am not sure what the attendance expectations were, Saturday's Medical Biophysics Open House must be considered an all around success.  Hundreds of undergraduate students descended onto Princess Margaret Hospital, on a cold winter morning (-15C, FYI!), to attend the annual Medical Biophysics Open House and learn more about our program.

Students from all the major universities in Ontario attended the event, all eager to meet faculty, talk to students and tour the laboratory facilities. In attendance, there were students with a variety of backgrounds:  from molecular and cell biology, physiology, biochemistry, chemistry to physics, engineering, mathematics and beyond. The morning started with the majority of the undergrads sifting through the different posters and talking to the many graduate students and supervisors available at hand.

While 80% of the posters were located in the main hall, there were a few posters relegated in a moderately conspicuous room representing the physics stream, specifically Sunnybrook hospital projects . And that's where I was. Honestly, I would have preferred to be in the middle of the action and high student traffic area, but I made the most of it. But despite the less than perfect strategic position, I was able to talk with many students that courageously ventured in the dungeon room.

There you would have seen me gesturing and waving my hands, while explaining the wonders of cardiac MRI, the amazing things we are doing in the Wright group and in the MBP program in general. I was able to interact with undergrad students looking for summer positions, recent grads looking for Masters or PhD positions, and everyone seemed extremely receptive and impressed (by the way it's extremely easy to wow a second year student!)

But the most endearing aspect of this whole experience, was looking into those inquiring eyes and seeing myself from a few years ago. I remember being at a crossroad of my life trying to decide whether to stick with my 'right-out-of-school' engineering job or apply to grad school. Not really knowing which school to select or what lab to apply to.  Just like that younger Samuel, many students today were driven by an inner passion for more learning and consciously steered towards grad school.  But like an explorer faced with the decision of taking the right or the left trail, personal passion sometimes leads you to the unknown, which is filled with anxiety.  Hopefully, today I was able to decrease some of that anxiety and paint a brighter picture of graduate school, a little less daunting and present to those students the great aspects of our interdisciplinary program.

Overall, it was an extremely great experience. I could go on and talk about the socially-awkward-feet-staring-probably-disconnected-from-the-real-life students, or about the food, or the keynote address by Peter Burns, but I'll let the pictures do the rest of the yapping....(and no, the above-mentioned students are not included in these pictures....)

(By the way I took the pictures with iPhone using the pretty cool panoramic app "Pano", some of the stitching is not perfect but whatever... enjoy)

more pictures below.....