When Emma Kasinyabo led a group of Grade 9 students through a research lab at the Li Ka Shing Institute of Virology, she challenged them with a pop quiz about the immune system.
See if you can get it, too.
Naked mole-rats can't get cancer and certain breeds of duck have a protein that prevents them from getting sick with influenza, she told them.
"Why do those two facts matter?" asked Kasinyabo, a new bachelor of science graduate from the University of Alberta's immunology and infection program jointly offered by the Faculty of Science and Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry.
"They immediately said, 'Well, maybe we can find out why and apply it to humans,'" she marvels. "It's crazy that they understood translational research at age 14, a concept I don't think I understood until maybe my first couple years of university."
During her time at the U of A, translational research into fighting infectious diseases has gone from being something she understands to becoming her biggest passion. Now the future presents many possible paths: immunology researcher, surgeon, professor — or all of the above?
That's because asking good questions, digging in to find answers and inspiring others to do the same comes naturally to Kasinyabo, according to her undergraduate mentor Vanessa Meier-Stephenson, an assistant professor of medicine and infectious disease researcher.
"What impressed me the most about Emma was her enthusiasm for the sciences and the way that she asks questions that stimulate more questions," Meier-Stephenson says. "I think she would make a great researcher, but she has many different options in front of her."
A family connection
Born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kasinyabo came to Canada with her family as an infant so her father could study petroleum engineering. As the family moved from Montreal to Calgary, then to Edmonton and Fort McMurray, they spoke French, Swahili, Lingala and English at home and remained close to family members back in Africa. Learning that numerous family members — most recently a cousin and an uncle — had lost battles with infectious diseases that might not have been fatal here fired Kasinyabo's curiosity.
"Congo is burdened with a lot of infectious diseases like Ebola, malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy and HIV. COVID was at the bottom of the list," Kasinyabo explains.
She never got used to those deaths. When she took an introductory course in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology and then faced her own bout of sepsis — a serious complication of infection — she knew this was the field she wanted to study.
