Samantha Yammine | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Alma mater | University of Toronto (PhD) |
| Occupation(s) | Science communicator, neuroscientist |
| Website | samanthayammine |
Samantha Yammine is a Canadian neuroscientist and science communicator. She completed her PhD in 2019 at the University of Toronto.
Yammine earned her PhD in the Department of Molecular Genetics researching in Derek van der Kooy's neurobiology lab at the University of Toronto. [1] [2] She investigated activation and quiescence of neural stem cells and the fate specification of their progeny using clonal lineage tracing and single cell transcriptomics strategies. [3] [4] [5] [6]
Yammine is a science communicator. On social media, she goes by the name Science Sam. Her primary platform is Instagram, where she shares photographs, neuroscience news and facts, and items pertaining to daily life as a scientist. [7] [8]
In August 2017, she joined a group of science communicators to launch the Scientist Selfies project, a crowd-funded experiment using social media to test whether scientists sharing science through selfies on Instagram are rated differently in terms of warmth, trustworthiness, and competency. [9] [10] [11] Using the hashtag "#ScientistsWhoSelfie", the international and interdisciplinary team raised over $10,000 and collected over one thousand images from across the world. [12] Yammine was given a bursary as an 'emerging producer' by the World Congress for Science and Factual Producers in 2017. [13] She was an invited speaker at the 2018 USA Science and Engineering Festival and the 2018 Science Writers and Communicators of Canada. [14] [15]
In March 2018, Science magazine published a personal essay by a PhD candidate that critiqued academia's readiness to celebrate Yammine's and others' use of Instagram as a way to correct for systemic gender biases in STEM fields. [16] [17] Yammine and three coauthors replied with a letter in Science the following month. [18] [19]
With co-producers Shawn Hercules, Geith Maal-Bared, Daniel Celeste, and Carrie Boyce, she created the event Science is a Drag, during which scientists give lip sync performances and speak about their scientific research while wearing drag. The first event was held in Toronto in 2019 with support from the Royal Canadian Institute. [20] In March 2019, Yammine and television host Pierre-Yves Lord conducted an interview of Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques live while he was at the International Space Station. [21] [22]
Beginning in January 2020, Yammine began publishing short videos on the science of COVID-19. [23] [24] The following year Toronto Life magazine named her "The Covid queen of TikTok" for her videos covering "big-picture concepts" concerning COVID-19 vaccines and vaccine mandates in Ontario. The magazine reported that her videos on social media were viewed more than five million times a month and that she was the "go-to Covid news source for the TikTok gen." [23] She is one of the spokespersons for ScienceUpFirst, a science communication initiative aiming at reducing the impact of COVID-19 misinformation online. [25] [26]
Samuel Weiss is a Canadian neurobiologist.
Neural stem cells (NSCs) are self-renewing, multipotent cells that firstly generate the radial glial progenitor cells that generate the neurons and glia of the nervous system of all animals during embryonic development. Some neural progenitor stem cells persist in highly restricted regions in the adult vertebrate brain and continue to produce neurons throughout life. Differences in the size of the central nervous system are among the most important distinctions between the species and thus mutations in the genes that regulate the size of the neural stem cell compartment are among the most important drivers of vertebrate evolution.
Derek van der Kooy, Fellow of Royal Society of Canada, is professor in the department of medical genetics and microbiology at the University of Toronto. He received a master's degree in psychology at the University of British Columbia and a Ph.D. in anatomy from Erasmus University in 1978, as well as in the department of anatomy at the University of Toronto in 1980. Van der Kooy gained postdoctoral research experience at Cambridge University and at the Salk Institute in California. In 2021 van der Kooy was elected to the Academy of Science Royal Society of Canada.
A neurosphere is a culture system composed of free-floating clusters of neural stem cells. Neurospheres provide a method to investigate neural precursor cells in vitro. Putative neural stem cells are suspended in a medium lacking adherent substrates but containing necessary growth factors, such as epidermal growth factor and fibroblast growth factor. This allows the neural stem cells to form into characteristic 3-D clusters. However, neurospheres are not identical to stem cells; rather, they only contain a small percentage of neural stem cells.
Sally Temple is an American developmental neuroscientist in Albany, New York. She is a co-founder and scientific director for The Neural Stem Cell Institute and is a professor of Neuroscience and Neuropharmacology at Albany Medical College Temple is also the principal investigator in her laboratory that focuses on neural stem cells and therapies for neurological-related disorders
Raven Baxter is an American science communicator and STEM educator. Baxter began posting science education videos on social media under the username Raven the Science Maven in 2017.
Gladstone Institutes is an independent, non-profit biomedical research organization whose focus is to better understand, prevent, treat and cure cardiovascular, viral and neurological conditions such as heart failure, HIV/AIDS and Alzheimer's disease. Its researchers study these diseases using techniques of basic and translational science. Another focus at Gladstone is building on the development of induced pluripotent stem cell technology by one of its investigators, 2012 Nobel Laureate Shinya Yamanaka, to improve drug discovery, personalized medicine and tissue regeneration.
A selfie is a self-portrait photograph or a short video, typically taken with an electronic camera or smartphone. The camera would be usually held at arm's length or supported by a selfie stick instead of being controlled with a self-timer or remote. The concept of shooting oneself while viewing their own image in the camera's LCD monitor is also known as self-recording.
Sheila Nirenberg is an American neuroscientist and professor at Weill Cornell Medical College. She works in the field of neural coding, developing new kinds of prosthetic devices that can communicate directly with the brain, and new kinds of smart robots. She is a recipient of a MacArthur “genius” award and has been the subject of, or featured in, several documentaries for her technology for treating blindness.
Akiko Iwasaki is a Sterling Professor of Immunobiology and Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale University. She is also a principal investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Her research interests include innate immunity, autophagy, inflammasomes, sexually transmitted infections, herpes simplex virus, human papillomavirus, respiratory virus infections, influenza infection, T cell immunity, commensal bacteria, COVID-19, and long COVID.
Molly S. Shoichet, is a Canadian science professor, specializing in chemistry, biomaterials and biomedical engineering. She was Ontario's first Chief Scientist. Shoichet is a biomedical engineer known for her work in tissue engineering, and is the only person to be a fellow of the three National Academies in Canada.
Kay M. Tye is an American neuroscientist and professor and Wylie Vale Chair in the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences. Her research has focused on using optogenetics to identify connections in the brain that are involved in innate emotion, motivation and social behaviors.
Neurogenesis is the process by which nervous system cells, the neurons, are produced by neural stem cells (NSCs). This occurs in all species of animals except the porifera (sponges) and placozoans. Types of NSCs include neuroepithelial cells (NECs), radial glial cells (RGCs), basal progenitors (BPs), intermediate neuronal precursors (INPs), subventricular zone astrocytes, and subgranular zone radial astrocytes, among others.
Dianna Leilani Cowern is an American science communicator. She is a YouTuber; she uploads videos to her YouTube channel Physics Girl explaining various physical phenomena. She worked in partnership with the PBS Digital Studios from 2015 until 2020, when she discontinued her partnership. She has collaborations with other YouTube personalities, including fellow science communicator Derek Muller of the channel Veritasium, maker Simone Giertz, and mathematics animator Grant Sanderson of 3Blue1Brown.
BethAnn McLaughlin is an American neuroscientist, activist, and hoaxer. She is a former assistant professor of neurology at Vanderbilt University. Her research at Vanderbilt focused on neural stress responses and brain injury. After being denied tenure in 2017, she sought to have the decision overturned. The decision to deny tenure was upheld, and her employment at Vanderbilt ended in July 2019.
Sheila K. Singh MD, PhD, FRCSC is a chief pediatric neurosurgeon at McMaster Children's Hospital in Ontario, Canada. She is also Professor of Surgery and Biochemistry, the Division Head of Neurosurgery at Hamilton Health Sciences, the Research Director for McMaster's Division of Neurosurgery, and a scientist/principal investigator appointed to the Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute at McMaster University.
Gloria Choi is an American neuroscientist and neuroimmunologist and the Samuel A. Goldblith Career Development Professor in the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Choi is known for elucidating the role of the immune system in the development of autism spectrum disorder-like phenotypes. Her lab currently explores how sensory experiences drive internal states and behavioural outcomes through probing the olfactory system as well as the neuroimmune system.
A "selfie museum" or "Instagram museum" is a type of art gallery or installation designed to provide a setting for visitors to pose in photographs to be posted on social media sites such as Instagram. Typical features of exhibits in a selfie museum include colorful backdrops, oversize props, and optical illusions such as anamorphosis.
The representation of the Holocaust on social media has been a subject of scholarly inquiry and media attention.
Jenny Hsieh is an American cell biologist and Semmes Foundation professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). Her work focuses on epilepsy and stem cell biology.