Department of Immunology
Dr. Gommerman has been working as a faculty member in the Department of Immunology at UofT since 2003. In this capacity, she established and mentored a team of talented trainees from the undergraduate to the graduate and post-doctoral level. Students who have graduated from the lab (5 PhDs) have gone on to further post-doctoral training in well-recognized international laboratories. Her students, who have published in high profile journals, have also won a number of prestigious awards both as graduate students and later as post-doctoral fellows. In 2014, Dr. Gommerman assumed the role of Graduate Coordinator and in this role she spearheaded a new Applied MSc program in Immunology. In her capacity as Graduate Coordinator, she continues to seek mechanisms to improve the graduate student experience and to enhance learning and career outcomes for the students in the Department.
Reflection
As a mentor for graduate students, my ultimate goal is to communicate scientific knowledge in a manner that is inspiring, and to encourage students to think critically. Seldom is there a one-size-fits-all mechanism for meeting these objectives, which makes my job challenging. However the reward is worth the effort: the most satisfying outcome being the privilege to observe, in a longitudinal manner, a student's maturation process in action.