Hotchkiss Brain Institute - HBI

What a day! 🧠✨

HBI Research Day 2026 brought together researchers, clinicians, trainees, and industry partners to share discoveries, spark new ideas, and celebrate brain and mental health research.

Some highlights from the day included:

🔹 An inspiring keynote presentation from Dr. Louise McCullough, who was honoured with a traditional white hat ceremony courtesy of Fraser Abbott and Tourism Calgary

🔹 Engaging fireside chats and discussions on s*x differences in brain and mental health research

🔹 Trainee Lightning Pitches and awards showcasing the next generation of neuroscience researchers

🔹 Insights into cutting-edge research technologies from Thermo Fisher Scientific and the HBI NeuroTechnology Core Platforms

🔹 Interactive activities sponsored by TELUS Spark Science Centre, including an appearance from Flint the Robo-Dog

🔹 Great conversations and great coffee from Devil’s Head Coffee Bar, sponsored by Charles Real Estate

A sincere thank you to our keynote speaker, Dr. Louise McCullough, as well as our session moderators, judges, presenters, and attendees. Your expertise, curiosity, and engagement are what make Research Day such a meaningful opportunity to connect, learn, and collaborate.

We are also deeply grateful to our sponsors and partners: Alberta Neuroscience, BioAlberta, Cortical Consulting, Leica Microsystems, RetinaLogik Inc., Charles Real Estate, TELUS Spark Science Centre, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Tourism Calgary. Your support helps create opportunities for knowledge sharing, trainee development, and scientific collaboration that extend far beyond a single day.

Thank you to everyone who joined us, we look forward to seeing you next year!

A New Way to See Inside Cells 🔬

Dr. Hedwich Kuipers wants to understand how inflammation shapes disease in the central nervous system. But to answer questions like that, researchers need tools precise enough to capture what’s happening inside individual cells.

For years, flow cytometry has been one of those tools. It rapidly analyzes proteins and other markers across thousands of cells at once, helping researchers identify patterns that would otherwise be invisible. But it has a limitation: it can tell you what’s in a cell, but not what the cell looks like or where signals are located inside it.

That’s where Dr. Kuipers’ newest tool at the Cu***ng School of Medicine’s Flow Cytometry Core facility comes in. Using the Amnis ImageStream, her team can now capture detailed images of individual cells as they move through the instrument, combining the speed of flow cytometry with the visual detail of microscopy.

The result? Researchers can now see not just what proteins are present, but exactly where they’re active inside each cell 👀

Because the more precisely we can see, the more precisely we can ask. And that’s what basic science is all about!

From the bedside to the bench 🔬

Before becoming a researcher, Dr. Atefeh Rayatpour was a nurse in an intensive care unit in Iran, caring for people with neurological conditions and growing curious about the mechanisms driving their symptoms. That curiosity eventually brought her to the lab.

Now, as a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Wee Yong’s lab at the HBI, she studies oxidative stress and why the brain struggles to repair itself in multiple sclerosis.

At the centre of her work is NOX2, an enzyme in immune cells that produces reactive oxygen molecules. When overactive, it creates a toxic environment that damages myelin and interferes with the brain’s ability to repair itself.

By understanding how NOX2-driven oxidative stress shapes disease progression, her research aims to uncover new ways to protect the brain and support repair. Fundamental Discovery is where it all starts 🔍

Watch Atefeh’s full feature via the link in our bio 👆

Big breakthroughs in brain and mental health start with fundamental discovery.

The brain is built over time, through a sequence of precisely timed steps that shape how we think, learn, and behave 🧬

Dr. Mats Ambrozkiewicz, PhD, studies how these developmental processes unfold at the molecular level.

His lab focuses on how protein signaling helps guide brain development, including ubiquitination, a molecular pathway that allows cells to modify, redirect, or remove proteins at the right time.

Timing is critical in brain development, but we are still learning how ubiquitin controls that timing, and why small molecular changes can alter how the brain is built and functions.

This is why fundamental research matters: understanding how the brain develops provides a foundation for understanding neurodevelopmental conditions and identifying where new approaches to diagnosis and treatment may begin.

Follow our channels this week for more basic science features ✨