Three MSL postdoctoral fellows receive 2026 Pathway to Independence Award

The Michael Smith Laboratories Pathway to Independence Award aims to support the research and career development of outstanding MSL Postdoctoral Fellows and Research Associates, and we are excited to congratulate the three individuals who were selected for this award in 2026. They will lead new projects aligned with their future career research focuses, which could lead to the generation of preliminary data for future grant applications to external funding agencies.

Their 12-month projects will begin on June 1, 2026, and we look forward to hearing summaries of how their projects have progressed during an MSL seminar talk in spring 2027.

2026 Pathway to Independence Award Recipients, from left to right: Dr. Huan Zhong, Dr. Rui Han, and Dr. Michelle Ng

Dr. Michelle Ng
Supervisor: Dr. Marco Marra
Project title: Investigation of ‘HPV-negative’ cervical precancers – potential missed cases in BC’s new screening program

British Columbia is in the process of transitioning from liquid based cytology (Pap smear) to HPV testing for cervical cancer screening. While HPV testing has proven to be more effective at detecting precancerous lesions, there is a small risk of false negatives in some instances, where a patient may test negative for HPV but have precancer detected through cytology. Michelle’s project aims to take advantage of the overlap in both types of screening to assess and improve the sensitivity of HPV testing and reduce the occurrence of false negatives.

 
Dr. Rui Han
Supervisor: Dr. Harry Brumer
Project title: Elucidating xyloglucan utilization in human colonic Bacillota

The human gut microbiota primarily consists of two types of bacteria: Bacteroidota and Bacillota. While we currently have a strong understanding of how Bacteroidota utilize xyloglucan, which is a complex sugar found in the plants we consume, very little is known about the same mechanisms in Bacillota. Rui’s project aims to fill this gap to ultimately inform dietary interventions and targeted drug delivery strategies for improving human health. 

 
Dr. Huan Zhong
Supervisor: Dr. Leonard Foster
Project title: PEARL-MS: Pairing Proteomes and Lipidomes within the Same Single Cell to Resolve Multilayer Cellular Heterogeneity

Current single-cell workflows for measuring proteomes and lipidomes do not measure these together within the same cells. Proteomes reveal cellular functional machinery, and lipidomes reveal membrane organization, signaling, and metabolism, and so relationships exist between these two components that may be lost when not measured within the same cell. In Huan’s project, she will build, benchmark, and optimize PEARL-MS, a workflow that allows these measurements to be paired in order to reveal protein-lipid relationships, which can be especially relevant in models of infection.