Diverse communities are innovative communities

Dr. Lorelei and Dr. Rosalind Silverman, Photo by Ashlea Wessel

This morning, I attended an extended citizenship ceremony at MaRS and watched 60 new Canadians swear their oath, while renewing my own oath as a citizen of Canada. It was an emotional ceremony, one that made me feel lucky to have lived here all my life; lucky to be witnessing this group’s first proud moments as citizens.

Wondering why MaRS would be involved in this? I did too. Until, earlier this week, I received an email from Rosalind Silverman-Gavrila and it all became clear. She’s a member of the MaRS community — AND one of this year’s Top 25 Canadian Immigrants. For good reason. She’s an active volunteer as well as acell biologist with a start-up venture.

Intrigued, I interviewed her. This is her story – and the story of why we should all be so welcoming of diversity in our community.

So, tell me a little about yourself.

My name is Dr. Rosalind Silverman and I am a postdoctoral fellow with TGH and UofT Faculty of Medicine. My sister is a postdoctoral fellow with UofT, Faculty of Medicine. We both received our Master of science and PhDs from York university with distinction. I am also part of the MaRS community (my lab is located there) and both me and my sister participated in many of the Entrepeneurship 101 events. We were awearded the Top 25 Canadian Immigrants award (the first time this was awarded in Canada and included Mrs Adriene Clarckson and Michelle Jean among the winners) on May 28 and we thought to share this with our friends and colleagues from the MaRS community.

What brought you to Canada?

We came from Romania in 1996 as landed immigrants at age 26. We both had an MSc in Biology and we worked for a biotech company as scientists prior to coming here. Romania was by that time freshly emerging from communism and Canada was receiving applications for landed immigrants for skilled workers so we thought to try a new life in Canada. In Canada we went back to school at York University and each received another MSc and a PhD with distinction.

To Toronto?

Our father is a university professor and he was invited in 1998 to the Genetics Congress held in Toronto. When he returned from Toronto he said that if he would have had two lives he would have “lived one in Toronto”. It intrigued us as he did his postdoc at Harvard and also travelled all over the world as a professor and a consultant for a European association aimed at integrating post-communist Romania into the EU.

What do you like best about it?

The Canadian passport is the best in the world and also being citizens opens more opportunities like government jobs (we are fully bilingual and know four other languages so working for the government is an interesting option for us). We travelled all over the U.S. and Europe, Israel and recently to Egypt and we experienced only friendly feelings toward Canada and Canadians. Canada knows how to recognize and reward those who work hard: both of us received some of the most prestigious awards in our fields from all levels from institutional to federal such as NSERC and HSF fellowships, OGS scholarships, Dean academic excellence scholarships, etc.

How does it compare to your old home?

Canada and Romania are similar in many aspects: similar population (though Romania is such a tiny country by comparison), both are beautiful, with amazing natural resources. Bucharest, Romania’s capital, is a very cultural, artistic city, with a big university and industrial centre.  After the revolution it become an entrepreneurial hub. During the communism this was missing from Bucharest, especially in the life science industry. MaRS’ model is one that could be followed in every Eastern European country emerging from decades of communist economy as a way of training young scientist to bring their research to fruition. We took the Entrepreneurship 101 course at MaRS and we were fortunate to acquire a wealth of knowledge and skills from the course initiated by Dr. Redpath and Dr. Goh. The conferences, workshops and support MaRS offers to life science researchers is unparalleled and helped us start our company Valoir with two business ideas: a 2D electrophoresis core centre (well under its way), a natural drug company aimed at bringing natural products to market and valorification of an anti-ulcer drug patent, as well as to collaborate in a software company from the U.S. (Study Advantage) dedicated to biological data.

What can we learn from you?

We have collaborations with Romanian biotech and pharmaceutical companies as well as many contacts (through family and friend) with top scientists who could perhaps contribute to the pool of scientific knowledge that could be patented in Canada or U.S.

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