During some downtime this summer, Flavie Perron was browsing Instagram when a post caught her eye. Instead of swiping past, she lingered, discovering she could win a trip to sunny Spain just by creating a short video.
The contest from the issued a challenge to its student members: capture a typical day in the lab, farm, or field and you could be off to September鈥檚 in Valencia, Spain with registration, flight, and hotel costs all covered.听
Despite not having much experience creating video content, Flavie, a Biology PhD student who spends much of her time in the Aquatron鈥檚 wet labs, was inspired to give it a go.
After seeking advice from Aquatron aquarist Nayla Sernowsky, who also manages the facility鈥檚 , Flavie got to work documenting her day. She estimates it took six hours to make the three-minute (one of the platform鈥檚 video features), where she can be seen collecting blue mussel larvae from tanks, carefully labeling jars of samples, and filling buckets with algae for feeding.听
The video ends with her dissecting a sample of 50 juvenile mussels and collecting data on dry weights and shell lengths to track growth.
鈥淧eople told me, 鈥極h, it鈥檚 such a good video,鈥� Flavie says of her efforts. The hard work paid off when she was named the lucky winner.听
Making connections
Supervised by Dr. Ram贸n Filgueira of the Marine Affairs program, Flavie is studying chemical-free methods of producing triploids 鈥� blue mussels engineered with an extra set of chromosomes that make them grow faster and render them sterile. Research shows they may be more vulnerable to warmer waters under climate change.
鈥淗eat stress is the main thing that kills them,鈥� she says.
Flavie and Dr. Filgueira are working with their industry partner in P.E.I. to bring triploid mussels to market. 鈥淯ltimately, we want to have a fast-growing, potentially heat-resistant line of triploids for the Canadian aquaculture industry,鈥� she says.听
After arriving in Valencia for the four-day conference, Flavie presented some of her preliminary work exploring growth differences in mussels and took advantage of networking opportunities, meeting the Spain-based researcher whose work on mussel growth inspired her project.听
鈥淲e talked about my data and she said, 鈥楲et鈥檚 FaceTime when you鈥檙e back in Canada,鈥欌�� Flavie says.听
She also tried to not-so-subtly arrange her next visit to Europe (Norway is the goal). 鈥淎t the President鈥檚 Reception, it was open bar. You make contacts. People are happy,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 was talking to people from different countries, saying you guys should invite me for an internship.鈥�
鈥淭ake a chance with social media鈥�
In the second year of her PhD program after joining Dal from the Universit茅 du Qu茅bec 脿 Rimouski, Flavie says she hadn鈥檛 previously shared her work beyond conference presentations. The video provided some added exposure.
鈥淚 had people reaching out on Instagram from other universities, saying 鈥榯ell me about your triploid work.鈥欌��
Now, she has since made a second Reel in hopes of winning another contest. Her advice to students?
鈥淭ake a chance with social media, because it can actually pay off.鈥�