Mark Wainberg Fund Highlights
Fatima Yaseen

Portrait of Fatima Yaseen

Fatima Yaseen is a first-year MSc student at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on investigating the mitochondrial health of women living with HIV and to determine its associations with hormone dysregulation. Thanks to the support from the CAHR Mark Wainberg Fund, Fatima was able to attend the 35th Annual Canadian Conference on HIV/AIDS Research (CAHR 2026) in Winnipeg and present her poster, “Blood Mitochondrial DNA Content Between Women Living with HIV in the 2021–2025 ART Era and Women Living Without HIV from British Columbia.” Funding allowed her to travel to Winnipeg, participate fully in the conference, and engage with researchers.

The Mark Wainberg Fund was established in 2017 to assist Canadian basic science researchers – working in the realm of HIV virology – to present their work at accredited meetings in Canada and internationally. The program aims to continue Dr. Wainberg’s vision of fostering innovative HIV research and knowledge sharing and is made possible thanks to the support of ViiV Healthcare ULC.

This award enabled Fatima to attend the conference, share her findings, and connect with researchers working in women’s HIV health. Since she was already in Winnipeg, she was able to attend the New Researcher Workshop and take part in networking events that were important for her development.

“I was able to meet researchers doing similar assays that I wanted to do and learning from them what some of their setbacks were helped me plan my own work.”

Through this experience, Fatima gained new insight into research being done in women’s HIV health and learned from trainees facing similar scientific challenges. She strengthened her understanding of how her project fits into broader HIV research and gained ideas that will help shape the next steps of her thesis.

“It was refreshing to hear the experiences and needs of community members that are directly impacted by my research. Hearing their thoughts and questions about my work motivated me to continue pushing forward.”

This experience influenced Fatima’s future career goals by giving her more to think about in terms of the direction of her own research project. Learning about related work encouraged her to adjust some of her aims and explore new questions that may improve the impact of her research.