It’s enough to make Alex Moszczynski feel like the captain of a sinking ship.
A featured guest cancels last minute. A co-host is running late. A smaller-than-usual production crew is standing by. And it’s 10 minutes to air.
Navigating these types of nail-biting scenarios are part of the PhD candidate’s responsibilities as chair and frequent co-host of Gradcast, the official radio show and podcast of the Society of Graduate Students (SOGS).
Appearing on CHRW (94.9FM) bi-weekly, and then podcasted weekly online, Gradcast highlights graduate student research and experiences from across campus through feature interviews and panel discussions.
Launched in 2013, the show has expanded and transformed in just two years. What started as three amateurs and some radio equipment is now a skilled team of seven. Even last-minute guest cancellations are hardly enough to bat an eyelash at now – well, almost.
From Korean volleyball culture to soldiers’ letters home during the Second World War to the psychology of love, Gradcast offers a unique glimpse at what graduate students explore.
“Western grad students are doing incredible things,” Moszczynski said. “You learn about research going on here that you would never have guessed even existed as a field of study.”
The quirky show seeks to showcase a diverse graduate student experience that crosses faculties and disciplines. And with this approach, Moszczynski and his team are trying to draw in a wider community following.
“My goal is to make the show accessible to everybody and anybody,” he said. “It’s a bridge between academia, and the idea of the ‘Ivory Tower,’ and the wider community. You could have grad students or professors listening, but it could also be a person driving around in their car, or even your grandma.”
The show is also a useful practice ground for grad students, who are able to talk about their research in a completely new and different setting. “It forces students to present their research differently and take a step back,” Moszczynski said.
The 25-year-old’s interest in radio broadcasting didn’t emerge until he was asked to help with Gradcast. But he was influenced to pursue science and research through another form of communication: film. Inspired by the risk-taking scientists from Raiders of the Lost Ark and Jurassic Park – among other popular film characters boasting PhDs – Moszczynski set his sights on a doctoral degree from a young age.
“I guess I’m here because I like movies,” he joked.
He discovered his research passion during a stint working as an undergraduate summer student at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Hospital in a sleep clinic. There, he was assigned a project studying ALS patients.
“I had never heard of the disease before my first day there,” he said.
Motivated from meeting many ALS patients in Toronto, Moszczynski joined Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry Dean Michael Strong’s lab at the Robarts Research Institute as a masters student in 2012. He transferred to the PhD program with the Graduate Program in Neuroscience in 2014.
His research focuses on a sub-set of ALS patients who develop cognitive impairment, a complication that occurs in about 50 per cent of cases. He looks at a particular protein, tau, and the process of phosphorylation.
“In disease states, you get situations where tau is being phosphorylated too much or the process is not being regulated properly,” he explained.
With this knowledge, the young researcher is looking at inhibiting a second protein that adds a phosphate group to tau during this complicated process, resulting in cell toxicity. He’s currently moving into animal models to test the theory.
The potential impact could be a relief to patients and their loved ones.
“This syndrome is accompanied by problems with language and personality changes,” he said. “It can be devastating for family members and caregivers, who are already dealing with a difficult situation.”
Moszczynski and Strong are also drawing parallels to another related disease – chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a disease associated with repeated mild head trauma, commonly seen in high-performance athletes. They are contrasting the pathological processes around tau phosphorylation and looking for common mechanisms that might be at play in the two diseases, and, down the road, the possibility of common treatments for both diseases.
Being a part of Strong’s lab is a significant milestone for Moszczynski.
“It’s been really exciting to be a part of a legacy of ALS research here in London,” he said.
Equipped with a microphone and armed with an impressive record in the lab, Moszczynski’s success is opening quite a few doors on and off the air. Last month, he presented his research at See the Line to a crowd of more than 700 people, including former NHL MVP Eric Lindros.
His Gradcast gig has also been advantageous, scoring him the opportunity to co-host the Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) Ontario Competition in April with colleague and 3MT’s 2014 national winner Joseph Donohue. Starting in September, Moszczynski will be taking the reins of the Graduate Student Council at Schulich.
“Going beyond my comfort zone has led to amazing experiences for me,” he said.