HELEN DIMARAS, ALUMNA OF THE DEPARTMENT, DIRECTOR OF GLOBAL EYE HEALTH RESEARCH OPHTHALMOLOGY AND VISION SCIENCES AT SICK CHILDREN
The year was 2003. We were a group of 5 graduate students in the Gallie Lab at Princess Margaret Hospital. We were all within 2 years of starting our graduate degrees: Tim Corson, Marija Orlic, Stuart Lithwick and Mellone Marchong (the only non-MoGen student in our group). Our projects were finally starting to yield enough results to have abstracts accepted to the American Association for Cancer Research conference, which was to be held in Toronto that year.
But then SARS hit.
We were told 'work from home' (tell that to our cell lines and mouse models!). The AACR conference was postponed (eventually it was held in Washington DC). It was recommended that we avoid congregating in groups for fear of SARS spreading.
But we science nerds rebelled (sorry Toronto Public Health). After the initial uncertainty with SARS kept us quarantined at home, we started to hold lab meetings at Tim Hortons, until we were finally allowed back into the labs. I still remember vividly the crowds at the start of each workday, as we waited to have our temperatures read. Finding no proof of fever, we proceeded to don N95 masks and protective gloves to go about our day.
This remains one of the most interesting periods during graduate school... until of course the big northeastern blackout later that year. The year 2003 was definitely full of challenges!
