Health care attracts top Science College grads

By Scott McRae

Concordia’s Science College offers its hand-picked undergraduates students a rare opportunity: the freedom to conduct original research in each year of their program, a taste of the type of work many later pursue to great depths.

This year, Michelle Baryliuk-Raimbert, Maria Dakessian and Maher Jandali Rifai plan to take the skills they learned at the College and apply them to careers in health care.

Baryliuk-Raimbert, a physics major with a minor in multidisciplinary studies, spent much of this year studying the band structure of a naphthalene crystal, working out a theoretical underpinning for unexpected experimental data; next year she will he hunched over radiation machines, learning their diagnostic and therapeutic capabilities for a master’s in medical physics at the Université de Montréal.

A career in physics might seem odd an jump for someone who made a living out of the physical, teaching tap, ballet, jazz and modern dance full time for eight years after finishing high school, but for Baryliuk-Raimbert the similarities are striking. “Both require discipline and imagination,” she said.

To Maria Dakessian, an honours biochemistry student with a minor in multidisciplinary studies, the best aspect about the Science College was being able to see what research in the scientific field is like.

For years she has known that she wanted to be in health care, and though she spent two years volunteering in the geriatric ward of the Jewish General Hospital, she will be heading off to study dentistry at McGill next year. She chose the field because it offered a balance of rigorous challenges for a rewarding professional career and ample free time for a family life.

Fellow Honours Biochemistry student and Multidisciplinary Studies minor Maher Jandali Rifai will also go to McGill for dentistry next year and hopes to specialize in orthodontics. The quality of life appeals to him, but it is the human element he finds most alluring.

“It’s a job where you don’t deal with chemicals, or papers, or computers,” he said. “You deal with humans.”

Rifai has also been active in campus life. He established the Syrian Student Association at Concordia which, now three years old, has an office, an annual budget of close to $8,000, a scholarship it offers to students in need, and many exhibitions, lectures, plays and sports tournaments under its belt.

All three students speak with fondness about their Concordia Science College experience.