Follow Up: Western Alumna Rene Filion

by Mitchell Zimmer

The 2001-2002 autumn session turned out to be part of a remarkable fourth year for Rene Filion, one of Western's best and brightest alumni. The National Scholar won the Governors General medal, the Frances Weir Scholarship, the J.B. Bancroft Science Prize and Medal, The University of Western Ontario Gold Medal, the Julie Payette NSERC Graduate Scholarship, and to top it all off, she was accepted into the Johns Hopkins University Biomedical Engineering Masters program in Baltimore.

Now, she's adjusting to life in urban America, as Filion says, "After being here for two months now, I can honestly say that I miss Canada. My car was broken into twice in the first 6 weeks upon my arrival, causing substantial damage to my passenger side." There is also a new mind set to become accustomed to," I am also learning several life skills. The mind-frame of people here is 'everyone for himself.' … setting up a bank account and getting a social security number was a nightmare!"

Academically, that's another story as things seem to be going quite well. "I am currently taking 4 courses, teaching a 1st year class called 'Models for Life' and serving as a grader (TA) for a 3rd year Cellular Biology course (marking ~150 papers/week)" says Filion. "When not working on the above, I am in the lab working on my research. I joined the Johns Hopkins Center for Computational Biology, working on a mass transport modelling project aimed at determining the binding/transport/signaling pathways of a pro-angiogenic factor called basic fibroblast growth factor. Understanding angiogenesis (formation of new blood vessels) is crucial for treatment of ischemic heart disease as well as cancer…. Tons of experimental work has been done in the area (with over 3000 papers published in the year 2001 alone), but so far no one has put together a model to tie in all the experimental work into one theory (the ultimate goal of my research)."

There have been moments of self-realization as well, as Filion says, "I've discovered that I truly love to teach. I've also discovered that I enjoy conducting research in various fields. I've started work on a topic that I knew very little about (with no background in cellular biology), however, I've picked up the basics and running with it. … It's really neat!"

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