The McMaster Institute for Research on Aging (MIRA) Graduate Student Professional Development Award (GSPDA) offers essential support to graduate students working with MIRA researchers. These awards are designed to facilitate a range of activities, including presenting at academic conferences (virtual or in-person), attending professional training programs, completing online courses at other institutions or participating in research activities at external locations.
Valued at up to $500 per award, the GSPDA is awarded biannually in the spring and fall to assist graduate students in expanding their professional and academic endeavors. Click here to learn more or download the application form for spring 2026.
MIRA is proud to announce the recipients of the fall 2025 GSPDA are:
Dimple Dawar | PhD candidate | School of Rehabilitation Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences | Supervisor: Dr. Jackie Bosch
Dimple will be presenting two chapters of her graduate thesis, “Contextualizing the Strategy-Based Cognitive Rehabilitation Intervention for Indian Stroke Survivors” and “Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Cognitive Rehabilitation intervention or Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) for Improving Post-Stroke Functional Deficits Due to Cognition: A Study Protocol” as e-posters at the World Stroke Congress taking place October 22-24, 2025, in Barcelona, Spain.
Madeline Rao Shishis | PhD candidate | Department of Kinesiology, Faculty of Science | Supervisor: Dr. Dylan Kobsar
Madeline will be presenting her first research study, which explores preoperative biomechanical variables, beyond self-reported measures, that may differentiate patients undergoing partial versus total knee arthroplasty at the 37th Annual Congress International Society for Technology in Arthroplasty (ISTA) taking place September 15-18, 2026, in Munich, Germany.
Mya George | Master’s student | Department of Health & Aging, Faculty of Social Sciences | Supervisor: Dr. Nicole Dalmer
Mya will be presenting two posters at the Canadian Association on Gerontology (CAG) taking place October 23-25, 2025, in Montréal, Canada. The first shares preliminary themes from her Master’s thesis on older adults’ experiences with close friend bereavement, and the second presents a scoping review on grandparents’ experiences of grandchild bereavement.
Zaineb Hamoodi | PhD candidate | Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Faculty of Science | Supervisor: Dr. Phillip Britz-McKibbin
Zaineb will be presenting a poster on her research project that aims to identify a urinary biomarker to predict delirium in older adults using capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry (CE-MS) at the Mass Spectrometry & Advances in the Clinical Lab (MSACL) taking place September 21-26 2025, in Montréal, Canada.
Congratulations!
