CUBEC's first successful in-person conference
Today, the Canadian Undergraduate Biomedical Engineering Conference (CUBEC) is Canada’s largest undergraduate conference in biomedical engineering. This conference, and many of its?past events, were designed with CUBEC’s goals in mind: to provide a platform for students to network and build meaningful connections, and to expose and inform undergraduate biomedical engineering students about internship and post graduate options across Canada. The editors of this article, alongside CUBEC executives and subcommittee members, come from across the country, with 2023-2024 members hailing from British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and Newfoundland. CUBEC is a student-led, not-for-profit group, run by undergraduate students, for undergraduate students. We are proud to have successfully run our first in-person conference in Toronto, Calgary, and Montreal this past January, in collaboration with UT BIOME , McGill Bioengineering Undergraduate Student Society (BUSS) , and Biomedical Engineering Students' Society .?
CUBEC initially started in 2020 during the pandemic as a collaboration between BUSS and UBC’s Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Student’s Association (BMEUSA). This was a Canada-wide virtual conference that all students could attend, free of charge. In the subsequent year, CUBEC became its own independent group and started recruiting students from all across the country, holding a similar virtual conference. In the following years, CUBEC organized networking occasions featuring industry experts and professors on panels, facilitating connections among students and providing them with enhanced insights into both biomedical engineering firms and academia.
CUBEC’s activities have allowed students to learn more about the different specialties within biomedical engineering, such as medical imaging, artificial intelligence, robotics, and various other technologies in the field. When searching for opportunities during and after graduation, undergraduate students have had difficulties finding internships and opportunities in the past. During this year’s conference, we had multiple workshops to introduce students to topics such as entrepreneurship, clinical engineering, and post-graduate studies. Through CUBEC’s efforts, we hope to bring more awareness and inclusion to students in biomedical engineering concerning the options and occupations that they can pursue.?
Behind the scenes, there is a lot going on for the CUBEC executive team and subcommittee members in the days leading up to the event. Reaching out to sponsors, financing events, organizing the logistics for the event, and event marketing? are just a few responsibilities of the CUBEC team. Organizing and communicating with all these different companies, groups, and students from across the country was a feat the CUBEC team was able to accomplish. From Curtis Ehlert, the CUBEC Co-Chair, “This event took a considerable amount of teamwork, organization, and effort, and I’m thoroughly impressed with the work that’s been done. The lesson here: don’t underestimate undergraduate students”.
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The success of our conference is in part due to our many sponsors in the industry that helped make this year’s conference and past events possible. For CUBEC 2024, these include 美敦力 , MOLLI Surgical, now part of Stryker , AbCellera , Providence Therapeutics , and Circle Cardiovascular Imaging . In addition, we have UTBIOME, BMESS, and BUSS to thank for their support in helping us host events in cities across the country. We also have our subcommittee members who supported us at their respective schools, and the CUBEC executives who volunteered and took a substantial amount of their time for this conference while having full course loads at school. From the CUBEC team, it is our pleasure and passion to hold this event, and we hope to see everyone at CUBEC next year.
For anyone interested, we are always interested in collaborating with more groups. Please feel free to reach out to our CUBEC chairs at [email protected]
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