Faculty of Health Sciences

Andrea Jacob has influenced her communities on campus and off since arriving at McMaster. Building on one of her experiences in high school, she co-founded and serves as co-president of Girl Up McMaster, an organization working to build gender equality by educating and empowering youth in both the McMaster and Hamilton communities. Andrea has also served as a board member of the larger Girl Up Canada organization since 2018.

Andrea has been a stylist for the Health Sciences Charity Fashion Show, a Welcome Week representative for the Faculty of Health Sciences, an executive member of the Indigenous Health Movement team and was director of creativity and engagement for The Serenity Project, an organization that supports at-risk women through programming related to mental health and suicide. Andrea has also been active in the University research community by serving as a volunteer research assistant with the McMaster Children’s Hospital CeliacConnect clinic registry.

Faculty of Health Sciences and Engineering

Angel Cai served as the co-president of Collegiate DECA Canada, the largest undergraduate conference in the country, after also volunteering in various capacities with DECA organizations both nationally and at McMaster. She has been co-chair of the McMaster Engineering Competition and vice-president of finance with the iBioMed Society. She has also been a mentor with iBioBuds.

A co-president of McMaster Youth for Asia and a mentor with Overcome the Gap, Angel has also assumed a number of creatively focused volunteer roles. She was the design executive for the DeltaHacks hackathon, director of design and creative content for Scinapse McMaster and a member of the graphics subcommittee for The Muse. She has been vice-president of marketing for both Mac Ethics and the ESSCO (Engineering Students Societies’ Council of Ontario) annual general meeting, as well as promotions coordinator for SURGE (Stimulating Undergraduate Research and Growth through community Engagement).

Faculty of Science

Kian Yousefi Kousha is the creator and host of the CFMU radio show SciSection that explores the impact of science on our day-to-day lives and offers features including The Scientist of the Week, an emphasis on mental health in science and a pandemic-focused series of conversations with university presidents across Canada.

Kian has served as co-president of the McMaster Synthetic Biology Research Team and McMaster SickKids. He co-founded and served as vice-president of Vision Beyond Barriers McMaster, a club dedicated to eye health. He has been a mentor with the McMaster Science Society, and the fourth-year student representative at the McMaster Neuroscience Society. He was the outreach coordinator with Art of Living McMaster and was in the backstage crew at the McMaster Science Musical. In 2020, Kian was chair of the nationwide Canadian Undergraduate Research Competition (CURC). He was also a volunteer research assistant for a project in the Division of Pediatric Neurology.

Faculty of Science

Maheen Raja has actively engaged in a variety of extracurricular and volunteer activities that showcase her commitment to community involvement and leadership, particularly within the field of medicine. She is the vice-president of outreach with McMaster Friends of MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders) and clincial director for McMaster Medicine and You. She is also a member of the promotions executive for the McMaster Dermatology Society.

As a Welcome Week representative with the McMaster Science Society, Maheen helped orient new students to the Faculty of Science and she has also been active with the McMaster Pakistani Students’ Association where she has served as vice-president of events. Maheen also has a strong track record as a fundraiser, having been part of the McMaster Cancer Society’s fundraising committee and taken on the role of vice-president, fundraising for the McMaster chapter of Operation Smile, the organization that helps children worldwide receive procedures for cleft lips and palate

Faculty of Science

A contributor to the Community Volunteer Circles (CVC) Letters to Seniors program, Nicholas Socholotiuk has dedicated a significant portion of his volunteer time to his personal and academic interest in music. He served as a volunteer with the Digital Music Lab (DML) and was also the community outreach coordinator for the McMaster Music Society (MMS).

Additionally, Nicholas has built an extracurricular legacy around creative writing. He reanimated the Poetry & Creative Writing Society (PCWS) at McMaster, recruiting the new executive team, achieving club ratification and then serving as the organization’s president. He also founded and served as director of 1PEN, a creative writing competition and network that links student writing groups at several Canadian universities. Nicholas has also served as a guest judge for the Hamilton Public Library’s Power of the Pen young writer competition.