Sufia Khader is the 2025 recipient of the Marcelle-Gauvreau scholarship awarded by the IRBV in collaboration with Les Amis du Jardin botanique de Montréal.
Sufia is a master’s student in the department of biological sciences of the Unifersité de Montréal under the supervision of researchers Simon Joly and Stéphanie Pellerin.
Sufia Khader works on the conservation of Van Brunt’s Polemoine, a threatened plant in Quebec and Canada. She aims to quantify the importance of clonal reproduction within populations using genetic markers.
Over the years, Sufia has participated in several science outreach initiatives related to her studies. She has won awards for creating a comic strip and a video game about conservation, and participated in the Three Minute Thesis competition. She also produced a short video for an ACFAS science outreach competition and created educational materials for Researchers’ Night at Espace pour la vie. All of these projects aimed to raise awareness of her research and make plant biology research more accessible and engaging for the general public.
Sufia also actively contributes to the social life of the Institute and the Université. She has been involved in organizing numerous events, such as the end-of-year party and the biological sciences symposium. She co-organizes a board game club that attracts participants from other Université de Montréal campuses every month. Finally, she is a representative on the library committee of the Université de Montréal’s association of students in biology research (AECBUM), where she helps to better align the activities of the Hubert-Reeves and IRBV libraries with the needs of biology students. In 2025, she received an award for student engagement from the federation of student associations of the Université de Montréal (FAÉCUM) in recognition of her involvement.
Sufia is also actively involved in her community. She worked as a program assistant for the Sustainable Neighbourhoods Action Program at a non-profit organization in Toronto, where she organized and facilitated workshops to gather ideas from residents in their neighbourhoods. She volunteered as an interpreter at the Royal Ontario Museum from 2017 to 2020 and has volunteered at Bioblitz events and the Montreal Insect Show. Finally, she is a member of the Montreal Field Naturalists’ Club and the Bird-Friendly City (VAO Montreal) committee.
Once she has completed her master’s thesis, Sufia hopes to continue popularizing science to build stronger connections between the scientific community and the general public.
With her, we have a valuable ambassador for promoting science communication to the public.