2024 – 2025
Fall 2024
Yearly UofT Club Fair
Sharing our association’s mission with incoming and current UofT students, recruited general members, and connected with our community at the annual club fair hosted by UTSU.
Informational Seminar: How to get into undergrad research? Tips & Tricks seminar
Our annual seminar for how to enter and thrive in the world of undergraduate research, with first an overview of all the research opportunities available at UofT in a diverse range of fields, with then a panel discussion with current undergraduate researchers as speakers discussing their own research journey, challenges faced, and what they learned and took away from their experiences.
Informational Panel: Demystifying Biotech – What Is It?
An evening of career talks with the goal of demystifying the different, diverse careers in biotech, from startup founder to industry scientists to venture capitalists, to medical liaisons, and further elucidate what a career in industry and industry research looks like, the path to get there, and hear from professions on their personal experiences.
UofT Research Lab Tours
These are small, exclusive guided laboratory tours led by graduate student(s)/post-doctoral fellow(s) and/or principal investigator of an academic research lab at UofT.
Coffee Chats
Small, casual chat with graduate student(s), early career researcher, or leading expert regarding a topic of interest, with a focus on personal experiences, key takeaways, advice giving, and discussing challenges and ways to solve them.
Social Event: Connect with URSA Executives!
Casual social event such as a movie/board game/trivia night etc. hosted by URSA student leaders to better connect with the undergraduate research community.
Networking Webinar: Connect with an upper year researcher – POSt opportunities!
Webinar featuring upper years in a variety of programs answering questions about the academic and research opportunities and talking about their personal experiences ahead of program selection.
Academic Research Conference: The Cancer Tug-a-War: struggles & progress
A two-day, academic conference for undergraduates powered by undergraduate researchers. Students and early career trainees, with a focus on undergraduate researchers, doing research in a variety of research fields, from biophysics to biomedical engineering to sociology will give oral and poster presentations on how their research is advancing the fight against cancer, from looking at cell migration to cancer detection to the societal impacts and barriers to proper cancer treatment. Leveraging the presence of diverse fields, cancer research and advancements will be highlighted via many different angles and across the translational research spectrum.
Networking Webinars: Connect with a ROP/work study/research exchange/thesis student
Webinar featuring ROP, work-study, research exchange, and/or thesis students answering questions about these common research opportunities, talking about their personal experiences, and offering tips on how to best apply to these opportunities ahead of the application deadlines.
Year-Long Events
Bi-Weekly Newsletter: Newsletters featuring research opportunities, current and future URSA events, research spotlights, research advice columns, and more for the purpose of providing resources to and better connecting with our undergraduate research community.
PodCast Episodes: Science podcast featuring various different guests of all different career stages – undergraduate students, graduate students, students in professional schools, early career researcher/professionals, faculty etc. speaking about their career journey, latest breakthroughs in research, industry insights, and overcoming challenges in science.
Graduate to Undergraduate Mentorship: Program with Emerging & Pandemic Infections Consortium (EPIC)
This mentorship pilot program, in partnership with the UofT Emerging & Pandemic Infections Consortium, aims to connect graduate students and undergraduates interested in immunology, epidemiology, public health, genomics, and virology research and provide opportunities for undergraduate students to gain valuable advice and career insights, particularly relevant to future graduate school applications and education.