ARVO Annual Meeting 2026
2026 has been an exciting year for the Di Polo Lab so far and we wanted to share with everyone some of the good news.
New website
The Di Polo Lab website has undergone a complete transformation with freshly updated information. Please take a moment to look around our little corner of the internet and see our interesting projects and the important people contributing to these works.
Publications
The lab started the year off strong with a new publication regarding the disruption of the blood-retinal barrier integrity due to stress-induced mitochondrial fragmentation by Cueva Vargas et al in Molecular Therapy. Since then, we’ve successfully published a few more meaningful pieces of work from various projects and collaborations, all of which can be found on our Publications page here.
2025-2026 conference season
Our lab members have been hard at work attending and showcasing their research at various conferences since the latter half of 2025. Here are some of the highlights!
ISER/BrightFocus 2025 Glaucoma Symposium – Atlanta, Georgia, USA
From October 8-11, 2025, Drs. Heberto Quintero, Yuhikiro Shiga, Susannah Waxman, Sana El Hajji, and Ph.D. student Isaac Vidal Paredes were awarded travel awards to present their research in Atlanta, Georgia. Furthermore, Isaac and Sana also won first place for their poster and oral presentation, respectively!
26th Congress of Students, Interns, and Residents of the CHUM – Montréal, Canada
Isaac then continued his winning streak by taking first place for his oral presentation at the 26th Congress of Students, Interns, and Residents of the CHUM on October 16th and 17th, 2025. Congratulations Isaac! We are very proud of you!
ARVO Annual Meeting 2026 – Denver, Colorado, USA
The lab kicked off the 2026 conference season in Denver, the “Mile High City,” at the ARVO annual meeting. Even with the snow (in May!), our lab members had a great time learning about the new research happening in vision science and successfully presented their own work. We had three superb oral presentations from Heberto, Hiro and Isaac, along with a beautiful poster from our postdoc, Dr. Camila Saggioro. In addition, Isaac and Susannah also won travel awards from the RReSTORe consortium!
2026 Canadian Neuroscience – Montréal, Canada
Less than two weeks later from May 18th to 21st, our lab members continued to share their work at the 19th meeting of the Canadian Association for Neuroscience right here in beautiful Montréal. Heberto, Isaac, Camila and postdoc, Dr. Jennifer Pham, presented their posters to the broader Canadian neuroscience research community and made new connections across many fields.
Coming up: ISER 2026!
Next up on our conference itinerary is the charming coastal city of València, Spain. If you would like to see what we have been up to, then come join us from August 23rd to 27th at the XXVII ISER Biennial Meeting!
Honors/awards
Along with the various travel awards our lab members received to attend conferences, a few members also received prestigious fellowships to continue their important work. Dr. Yukihiro Shiga finished his postdoctoral fellowship and started his own lab as an Assistant Professor at the Centre de recherche de l’Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont (CR-HMR). Included among his fellowships was the Research Scholar award from the health section of the Québec Research Funds (Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Santé/FRQS). Dr. Jenni Pham was also awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the FRQS for the 2025-2026 application cycle 🎉
Congratulations to our amazing members. We are very proud of everyone’s hard work and can’t wait to see what you all will accomplish next!