The SCRC would like to congratulate Nagakannan Pandian on being the first recipient of the Research Manitoba/Will to Win PhD Graduate Studentship for his project entitled:
“Unravelling the molecular mechanisms of cell death after spinal cord injury and aims to search for novel therapeutic approaches.”
Mr. Nagakannan Pandian is a graduate student in Dr. Eftekharpour‘s Lab. He is currently in his 3rd year PhD program. He is from India and is the first person in his family to enter higher secondary education. He completed his bachelor’s in pharmacy in the year 2009 from Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences, India and remained there to complete a master’s degree in Pharmacology in the year 2011. He secured 94.5 percentile score in national wide competitive examination (GATE test) and ranked tenth at the state level entrance examination to enter Master’s degree.
After completion of his Master’s degree, Mr. Pandian joined BIOCON, a leading bio-pharmaceutical company as a research associate and obtained valuable experience in drug discovery research. He joining Dr. Eftekharpour’s lab at the Spinal Cord Research Centre and Regenerative Medicine Program in January 2014.
He has five years of experience in preclinical models of neurotrauma research and pharmacokinetics and has 4 first authored and 5 co-authored publications to his credit. He has presented his research findings in several national and international conferences. Mr. Pandian has been supported by a Research Manitoba studentship during the first two years of his studies. He is a dedicated student and has already shown significant progress in his research and his studentship application has been ranked highly in the recent competition.
This Graduate Studentship award was established by a new partnership between Research Manitoba and the Manitoba Paraplegia Foundation/Will to Win Classic Golf Tournament.